


Toss the Dice

by Zeke Black (istia)



Series: Cross-Border Enforcement Agency [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, First Time, M/M, POV Buck Wilmington, POV Chris Larabee, Whore Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-26
Updated: 2004-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:14:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2000, Chris meets a hooker with a tooth of gold and has his life turned upside-down. First story in my <em>Cross-Border Enforcement Agency</em> AU, in which Chris is the leader of a roving unit of the (imaginary) CBE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toss the Dice


      
    
       Me and you
       And you and me
       No matter how they toss the dice
       It has to be
       The only one for me is you
       And you for me
       So happy together
    
          --The Turtles, _Happy Together_, 1967

IN THE BEGINNING  


###### Friday, September 1, 2000 | Everett, Washington

Chris Larabee entered the dark hallway of his townhouse and flicked on the light as he closed and locked the door. He put his gun case in the closet and toed out of his boots before making his way into the living room. Strong late-afternoon light slanting in the double glass doors lit the interior of the apartment. He slid the door open and drew fresh air deeply into his lungs. It got a hell of a lot hotter back home in New Mexico, but, shit, that was a dry heat.

He was wiped, but he couldn't kid himself the humidity had anything to do with it.

At least it was Friday night of Labor Day weekend and he could count on three relatively free days. He needed, his whole team needed, the recharge time. They'd been going all out since arriving in Everett six weeks ago. Usually they got up to speed on a case in days, but the situation here was abnormal. When they were sent to a hotspot along the Canadian or Mexican border to reinforce the local unit, it was generally extra manpower or his Rover team's expertise that was needed. They absorbed the accumulated data and proceeded from there. Most times, though, the local team was intact.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and wandered back to the living room. The apartment was attractive and well furnished, with wood and stone accents. A view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains beyond provided an ever-changing vista that had the novelty of being unlike anything he knew at home in dusty, middle-of-the-continent Four Corners. More practically, he was within easy reach of a choice of restaurants at the Marina Village.

The rest of his team was also well housed, if not as luxuriously. When they were on an in-and-out job, they shared hotel rooms and ate room service for an intensive week or two, occasionally even three. The Agency, however, had known from the start that this job would take months and had set them up accordingly. Vin and JD had opted to share a two bedroom, but each of the others had an apartment to himself in different buildings around the city.

They worked long hours in one another's pockets and lacked the network of downtime friends and familiar setting they had at home to help them unwind. A place to retreat to alone for a few hours was a necessity. The Cross-Border Enforcement Agency might--in its dreams--like an accounting of each pencil stub its agents used, but the Agency didn't stint when it came to its teams' psychological health. A stressed team was a recipe for inefficiency and inattention. In their job, that could end with blood.

Chris dropped onto the couch, letting his body settle into the give of the butter-soft leather. He put his feet up on the granite coffee table and took a long swallow of Corona. He needed to see Herrold again tomorrow. At least it wouldn't mean another trip to the hospital; he'd been notified on Wednesday that Herrold had been released. Herrold was on disability pay, recovering from his wounds.

Herrold was a damn good team leader. He was having trouble, though, dealing with a situation that had blown up, literally and figuratively. Two of his team were dead and another two, besides himself, were wounded. He'd slowed his recovery in the hospital by trying to second-guess every order he'd given, each strategy he'd devised during the CBE's first attempt to nail Peter Rex "Cagey" Miller.

Herrold's uncertainty about his own discernment reduced his helpfulness. Chris could understand the man's anguish and crisis of confidence. It was still freaking frustrating having to go over ground the Everett team had already covered simply because Special Agent Herrold no longer trusted his own judgment.

The other guys weren't having much better luck. They'd also be putting in some hours this long weekend between unwinding. Trujillo, Vin's counterpart in intel, was dealing with his own psychological burden. In his case, it was medical retirement from the Agency. He teetered between gratitude for his survival and depressed rage at being maimed. Half his right foot was gone. Poor bastard would never dance the polka again. He'd given Vin everything he'd accumulated on the Miller case, but, given the ambush Herrold's team had walked into, it was nowhere near complete.

And Chris sure as hell wasn't trusting his men's lives to its accuracy.

Vin took what he could from Trujillo and put his tracking skills to work, spending hours on his laptop following leads. His flair for connecting elusive dots made him one of the CBE's top intel men. He was earning his keep on this job.

The only unwounded survivor of the Everett team was one of the undercover duo. Digby had been their most useful source of information, eager to help the Rover team get the bastards who had destroyed his unit and killed his friends even as he dealt with his own grief and the shock of having come out of it unhurt. Digby, however, was only half of the undercover team. His partner, Jenkins, was still in the hospital, struggling to recover from the fractured skull that put her in a coma for a month. Memory loss and her fragile condition booted her out of the loop. They had her notes on contacts and odd bits of information, but they were written in a shorthand code that even Digby couldn't decipher.

Undercover agents tended to be guarded about their informants. Buck and JD understood--were that way themselves--but it was yet another frustration being cut off from Jenkins' input on the case. Josiah was working on the code while Buck and JD used their street skills and Digby's intros to forge their own connections, dig for their own information. They'd spend at least part of the weekend working the streets. It took time for new people to get the feel of a place and make contacts, to get their faces known, their names bandied about, build up their own rep.

Since the Everett team had been compromised, Digby stayed in the office while Buck and JD did the legwork themselves, new faces ingratiating themselves with the lowlifes who might provide useful leads. Armed with good-natured pushiness and bullshit up the wazoo, they were as slick undercover as Vin was at cyber-tracking. And they were working their magic, but it couldn't be rushed. Didn't matter how smooth they were, didn't matter how much cash they spread around: people with the inside dope they needed didn't trust quickly or easily.

To round off the information disaster, a grenade totaled the surveillance van during the fucked-up bust. Grant and Yan, the last two members of the Everett team, were killed, the tapes of the incident destroyed. If those tapes held some clue to how their cover was blown, none of the survivors knew what it was.

So here they were, settled in for the long haul. Chris sat forward and put the beer bottle on the table. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, feeling a familiar restlessness seeping into his marrow. Friday night after another slow week laying groundwork. He'd done this sort of work as a matter of course when he'd been part of a static team permanently located in New Mexico, dealing with situations on the southern border. He'd handled each new case step by step.

But since accepting the job as head of one of the elite Rover teams after Sarah and Adam were killed, he'd gotten used to coming in at a late stage of an operation, after the tedious groundwork had been done. He'd had the patience for that work once, and his team was the best there was, but the same restlessness that made it impossible for him to stay in Four Corners on a permanent basis was attacking him here.

He wanted action. Needed it. It could be weeks before this case broke and gave him the anesthesia of rapid planning and hard, fast movement with the exhilarating yet numbing high of danger.

He went into the kitchen and pondered dinner. He was too tense to eat out tonight. A workout at the gym would take the edge off--but not the right edge. Not at all the right edge. He picked up the phone and dialed one of the few numbers for this area he knew by rote. He drummed his fingers against his thigh as he listened to the rings. Like clockwork, it was answered on the third, a sultry voice breathing into his ear.

"Janetta Scott, _Personal Attention, Inc_. How may I help you?"

He grinned wolfishly. "Janet, glad I caught you. I know it's short notice, and Friday night, but I'm sure you'll have someone available." He added, just to annoy her, "Maria would do."

She sighed, and his grin widened. "Christopher, what a sur--well, no, it's not, actually."

He hadn't managed to figure out if she recognized his voice or if it was his shortening of her name that clued her in to his identity each time. Though it might be--

"Darling, I'm sorry, but _Amora_ is no longer with us. She received news of ill health striking her father and decided to relocate closer to her family."

"Lydia?"

Another sigh. "_Bethany_, darling, please. She's booked, I'm afraid. As is Krystal, before you ask. If you will leave it to the last moment on a Friday evening...."

He smiled, enjoying the game. He'd gotten to know Janet Scott, discreet Seattle madam for clients with large entertainment funds, two years ago. On their first assignment in Seattle as a newly formed Rover unit, the local lead agent had given Chris Janet's unlisted phone number. He'd used it on each of their five postings to this area.

"Usual surcharge acceptable, of course. Hell, Janet, I know you can come up with someone on short notice. Isn't your motto 'We go the extra mile to satisfy our customers'?"

"I'm sure you're aware, Christopher, that I make it a policy not to seek information about my clients' personal lives and professions--"

She paused as he snorted, then continued without missing a beat.

"--but I fear your vocation as a stand-up comic is quite impossible to hide. It's apparent each time you open your mouth."

"Uh-huh. And that's not the only thing apparent, so--?"

"As it happens," she said brightly, "I have someone available who will be perfect for you. Two hours from now all right?"

Two hours later, Chris had eaten, cleaned up the kitchen, showered, and was trying to quell the burgeoning restlessness. Maria or Lydia, someone familiar, would have been an easier prospect, but, hell, anyone would do. Just a warm body to sink himself into, the smell of sweat to drive out the memory of burned flesh, the exhaustion of hard physical activity to defeat the dreams that would otherwise crowd his sleep.

He wanted to get on with it, spend his energy in a compliant and anonymous body. He wasn't looking for a good time. Only forgetfulness, for however long he could manage.

The buzzer sounded ten minutes past the appointed time. He strode to the door, arousal that had nothing to do with desire already singing in his veins. He opened it and was brought up short, his greeting dying on his lips as he saw a man on the step.

"Can I help you?"

The man smiled widely and Chris thought he saw a flash of something. Was that a gold tooth? Who the hell has gold teeth these days?

"I believe I'm here to help you."

The voice was accented with mellifluous Southern tones not often heard in this area. A deepening of the smile creased his cheeks with dimples, and, yes, that was indeed a gold tooth. He held out a small envelope. Chris took it, seeing his name--well, "Christopher"--written on the front.

"Ms. Scott thought that you might appreciate seeing my...credentials." His voice was polite, but laced with humor as though he were enjoying a private joke.

A piece of stiff writing paper gave off a scent of lavender as Chris unfolded it and read, with difficulty, the few scrawled words:
    
    
      
    
    Darling Christopher,
    
    Allow me to introduce Ezra. I'm sure he will satisfy your requirements with the quality service you've come to expect from my company.
    
    Love,
    J.

He looked up in disbelief.

"Is this a joke?" He stared from the note to that damnably smiling face.

"Why, no, sir, it's not. Ms. Scott thought that you might be...."

His voice trailed off as Chris turned on a heel and stalked into the kitchen. Chris snatched up the phone and dialed. He had to unclench his teeth before he could speak when it was answered.

"Janet, what the fuck is this? What the hell are you doing?"

"Ah, Christopher. Ezra must be running a little late."

"He must be running in the wrong direction, too, or he wouldn't have ended up at my front door!"

"Christopher, please calm--"

"What the hell is this about? You ran out of women and decided to send me a, a--"

"It's called a man," she said coolly. "You can say the word without getting cooties."

"I know what he is. I want to know what he's doing here."

In the silence that followed, Chris turned and saw that Ezra had followed him and was leaning in the doorway. His head was cocked and he was rubbing a thumb over his bottom lip, but amusement danced in his eyes. Chris turned sharply away as Janet spoke again. Her voice was crisp.

"Darling, I really can't see that it makes a difference. You've sampled all of my girls who are able to meet your requirements and none of them have made much of an impression on you. Since your interest in them is isolated to their mouths and their derrières, Ezra is as well able to accommodate you as they are. Perhaps even better able since he's more experienced in certain activities."

"Jesus Christ, Janet--"

"It's your choice. Regretfully, I have no one else available this evening and I've naturally already put through the charge. And look at it this way, darling: he didn't have to bring a dildo with him."

He closed his eyes as the phone clicked in his ear. He held it for a moment, unable to believe she'd hung up on him, then flipped it closed and set it on the counter with exaggerated gentleness before he turned to face his visitor.

Ezra straightened as Chris looked at him and the merriment warped into a cool professional smile that made him resemble the women Chris was used to dealing with. Just anonymous flesh, he reminded himself. That's all he needed. He studied the fellow. Handsome enough face--bizarre gold tooth aside--though the face didn't matter much. He was about the height of a tall woman, a couple of inches or so shorter than Chris. There, all resemblance to a woman ended. His body was stronger, sturdier, than Chris was used to. The white linen short-sleeved shirt and knife-pleated charcoal pants hugged broad shoulders and muscular chest and thighs. No tits, obviously.

Chris shrugged away from the thought; breasts hadn't been an anatomical feature he'd had any interest in exploring since losing his wife. Just as he'd avoided vaginal intercourse since his first few disastrous sexual attempts after Sarah's death had swamped him with feelings of too-much-alike / too-little-alike and left him reeling in pain, he'd shied away from all sexual touches that reminded him of her. Anal sex was safe: he and Sarah had never done it. Oral sex was trickier, but he could indulge in it once in a while because Sarah hadn't done it for him all that often. Not often enough for him to be stamped indelibly with the feel of her mouth and her hands.

He looked at Ezra's mouth. Janet was right: a mouth and an ass were all he needed anyway.

"What's your name?"

Janet protected her employees' identities as assiduously as she kept her clients' identities from her workers. The latter was what made her a trusted service provider for sensitively placed individuals, but she was just as careful to shield her workers. She cloaked them in fantasy names and disapproved of them giving any client their real name, even if it was only their first.

"Ezra."

"No. Your real name."

The cocky smile returned, wreathing the face in dimples and returning the mischievous light to the large green eyes.

"Ezra," he said, and ran his thumb again along a lower lip that tugged into a smile as though he were amused at some private joke.

So that was how it would be. All right. It didn't matter. Real names or fantasy, it was all just anonymous flesh in the end. And that's the way he wanted it.

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the counter, assessing the fellow. Ezra straightened and his smile slipped again into blandness.

"Janet says you've got a good ass."

"Ms. Scott flatters me."

Chris curved his mouth into a smile that he knew didn't touch his eyes. "Let's hope not. This way." He pushed away from the counter and past the man in the doorway. He walked to the bedroom, aware of the following presence as he entered the large room. He paused beside the bed, turned to face Ezra, and unfastened the first button on his shirt. He nodded his head toward the en suite.

"Bathroom's in there if you need to prepare yourself."

He received a brilliant smile. "I come prepared."

Chris undid the rest of his buttons, watching as Ezra efficiently dealt with his own clothes. "And prepared to come?"

"Well, now, that would be a bonus, wouldn't it?"

Tension eased from Chris as he abruptly felt solid ground beneath his feet again, no longer at a loss with this bizarre situation. He'd never bothered with whether the whores he'd used in the past three years orgasmed or not; not his problem or concern. Not as with Sarah.... It was freeing to grasp that he didn't have to consider a male whore's needs any more than he did a woman's. Just another envelope of flesh. Different contours, but same purpose.

With the return of surety came a resurgence of arousal. The undissipated restlessness sang along his nerves as he dropped his hand to his fly.

"Allow me."

Ezra was close in front of him, head bowed as he brushed aside Chris's hands and unsnapped the waistband of Chris's jeans. Chris looked down at a head of thick dark brown hair, short on the sides and back but long enough on top to curl. Ezra exuded a faint scent, subtler than a woman's cologne, perhaps an aftershave or shampoo or soap, or a mix of all. It was a clean, breezy scent, nothing flowery or spicy about it. Chris took a breath of it, then grunted involuntarily as Ezra's warm hand brushed his tumescent dick as he pushed the jeans down Chris's legs. The brown head moved lower as Ezra settled into a squat.

Chris lifted his feet and stepped out of the jeans. Ezra caught each ankle in turn, pulling his socks off. He flipped each sock onto the pooled black denim, then rose slowly, his hands moving up the outside of each of Chris's legs. His warm palms barely touched Chris's flesh, which prickled with sensation as the hairs stood up on end. When he was upright, Ezra pressed their groins together and laid his mouth against the hollow of Chris's throat. Warm dampness touched his skin before Chris drew sharply back.

"That's not necessary."

He reached for his briefs, but again Ezra's hands brushed his away and peeled them down, over his swelling dick, down and off his legs. Like having a personal servant, Chris thought, looking down at the crouching figure. The idea made his cock jerk. Just a useful tool, like a comb or razor.

He took hold of his dick, pulling with sure, firm strokes to speed its hardening. The undiffused tension in him sizzled into his balls, energizing him into a swift, hard arousal. As he reached for the condoms and lube in the bedside table drawer, he cocked his head at the bed, arching his eyebrows at the man still in his underwear. The gold tooth glimmered momentarily before Ezra bent to remove his black satin boxers.

"But of course," he murmured, as he stretched with languid ease, then climbed gracefully onto the bed, "how remiss of me not to have noticed that the Coming Attractions have already aired and we're into the Main Feature."

He stretched out on his back. As he slid his legs apart and raised one knee, he stroked a hand down his smooth pecs to rest on his equally firm abs. Chris saw him only vaguely from the corner of his eye, his attention focused on rolling on the condom and lubing up. When he turned to the bed, he shook his head.

"Turn over."

He knelt on the bed as Ezra rolled onto his stomach. The women Chris had bedded since losing Sarah learned soon enough that all he wanted was to get off, and their job was simply to facilitate that act by not attempting to do more than provide a slick rectum. He was neither rough nor unkind, but he was also not interested in anything other than satisfying a purely physical need. And, hell, a whore was a whore: this one would behave the same.

From the back, he could see Janet was right: while Ezra was broader built than he was used to, his small, muscular ass held the tiny opening that was Chris's sole interest. He didn't need tits or rounded hips or more jiggly buttocks any more than he needed hands touching him or watching eyes. He just needed a tight hole to massage his dick to climax without any jolting memories.

Ezra draped himself half on his side, his top leg drawn up high, pulling his ass cheeks apart. His head was pillowed on one arm and he was watching Chris from the oblique angle. Chris ignored the face, the latest in a long line of faces in his bed that didn't matter, barely registered. He pressed a fingertip into the hole, satisfied to find it moist. The anus opened easily; either Ezra was well fucked or he'd used a plug on himself before arriving. Uncaring of anything but that he could get on with it, Chris settled the head of his dick into the anus and closed his eyes as he made the first urgent push inside.

He expected compliance from the whores he paid. What he didn't expect was a drawling accented voice urging him on, but he could ignore it. He listened instead to the pounding of the blood in his veins, the thump of his heart, the harsh rasp of his breathing as it speeded up. Signs and sounds of life: he was alive, his body lived. Against all that was fit and decent in the world, he lived when those who should be alive--instead of if not as well as him--weren't.

Despite the heated rage of his pulsing blood, cold swept over him with the sweat that exertion raised on his skin. Sex didn't provide even an illusionary warmth these days. It was as cold and instinctual as squatting down and shitting. He shat to ease a discomfort in his belly; he fucked to rid himself of the nervous energy that robbed him of sleep and hazed his thinking. His seed was no more to him than a type of shit. It was no longer a source of potential siblings for Adam, a colony of the genetic matter that had merged with Sarah's to create their son. He saw it now as a mere waste product that burdened his body if he didn't get rid of it.

Josiah had mentioned once that Renaissance people thought ill health arose from bad humors in the body. Humors like bile had to be expelled to cleanse the flesh. The quaint idea had stuck in his mind, amusing him at the time, back before the fire. Nowadays, he thought of his semen as a bad humor that he flung from himself, uncaring of where it went or what it was or what it had once had a hand in making.

A patch of warmth on his right hip distracted his thoughts. He looked down and stared bemused at a hand that was gripping him. The hand was man-large, but fine-boned and fine-skinned with short, manicured nails. The hand held him strongly, as though there were a connection between them beyond his dick up the guy's ass. With awareness of the warmth came other intrusions on his senses as the drawling honeyed voice also penetrated his consciousness. He looked up, his gaze lifting from his inner thoughts to the outer world and locking with brilliant green eyes. Ezra's mouth, still talking, broadened into a gilded smile.

He was fucking a hooker with a tooth of gold.

He gasped, losing his rhythm, almost brought to laughter at the absurd situation. Ezra's dark brows lifted, but the smile widened, the voice continued to pour over him, and the warm hand on his hip still held him with a false sense of security and connection.

"No."

He wasn't sure what he was denying, except that this kind of fuck wasn't what he was used to or wanted. He pulled part way out, then grabbed Ezra's hips and urged him up onto his hands and knees. The change in position pulled Ezra's hand from his hip and broke eye contact. He felt stabilized when both of Ezra's hands were on the bed and he couldn't see his face anymore.

"Ah, must be a Bedroom Farce," he heard Ezra mutter inexplicably. "I really must remember to read the playbill more carefully before I enter the cinema."

A hooker with a tooth of gold and a serious case of weirdness. He'd have to make his feelings on these matters clear to Janet next time.

He rested his hands on Ezra's smooth, sweated back and buried himself to the hilt, sighing at the sweet, deep thrusts now possible. No more hands touching him, no more false sense of warmth, no more eyes or smiling mouth. Just an envelope of flesh to shoot his evil humor into.

Plus that voice, which was apparently unstoppable. None of the whores he'd fucked through the years had gabbed nonstop. He blanked out the words and simply let the attractive drawl provide a new aural backdrop to the familiarity of his pulse and heartbeat thrumming in his ears as he drove toward climax.

And Janet was right about one other thing: Ezra did have a talented ass. He had control of his anal muscle beyond anything Chris had experienced. He seemed to know just when to squeeze to deliver a punch of pleasure and when to ease up and let Chris drive in and out of him in unimpeded surges. Chris noticed without at first understanding when Ezra lifted a hand from the bed and moved it between his own legs. He watched the back beneath his hands bow as more sweat sprang up on the smooth skin, but it was only when powerful contractions in Ezra's ass gripped his dick that he realized Ezra must have brought himself to climax.

His dick responded to the pressure and Chris shot powerfully, and again, before slumping onto the strong back, which supported him with such ease that he didn't feel the quick need to gather himself away that he did when it was a woman impaled under him, held immobile by his larger, heavier body. He was pretty certain that, whore or not, if Ezra wanted him to move, he'd make it happen, and he had the strength to enforce his wishes.

Chris let himself catch his breath before pushing up, weariness tugging at his muscles. He ringed the end of his dick with his fingers, then pulled out. He avoided looking at the condom covering him as he rolled onto his back. He was used to thinking of sex as a filthy business these days. So was shitting, but it was necessary. He'd clean up soon.

He felt Ezra rise from the bed. Good. He could sleep now, so they might as well call it a night. Sometimes he kept the whore with him for a second go later, but he could do without tonight. Lydia might be available next time. She didn't talk at him incessantly and she knew the futility of trying to touch him. She wasn't as good a fuck, didn't have that control over her ass the way many women did over their vaginas, but, hell, he'd get off with her and that was enough.

The bed dipped as Ezra sat down.

"You can go."

"Walk out during the Intermission? Good Lord, how rude."

He wasted a moment trying to figure out that cryptic statement, then shook it away. He was about to speak when he felt a cool touch on his groin and simultaneously opened his eyes and put a hand down to guard himself. Ezra, sitting unconcernedly naked with a damp towel in his hand, raised a single eyebrow, then turned back to his task, which was removing the condom from Chris's dick and wiping him clean.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Let me think about that one a moment. I don't think I'm vacuuming and I'm almost certain I'm not dusting. Could it be I'm cooking? Hmm. Possibly tasting the spaghetti sauce is next in order."

He swabbed Chris's crotch a final time and bent forward. He'd just touched his lips to Chris's dick when Chris shoved him away. Ezra's eyes held far too much teasing warmth as he grinned at Chris.

"Not ready for the Second Half yet?"

"I told you you could go."

"I was given to understand you sometimes enjoy oral attention."

Chris grimaced. "Janet give you a biography on all your tricks?"

"But of course. The well-briefed whore is an efficient whore. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Christopher?"

"Chris. Efficient, maybe. But you don't listen too good, do you?"

"On the contrary, I listen very well, Mr. Chris. For instance, Amora mentioned, before she left, that you're cold and forbidding, yet filled with passion behind high walls."

He winced. "Great. Now I have whores gossiping about me."

Ezra laughed. "Oh, come now, sir, you're not that innocent. It can't be any surprise to you that courtesans chat about their clientele."

He took hold of Ezra's wrist and lifted away the hand that was swirling two fingers around his left nipple. He deposited the hand on Ezra's thigh, sliding his eyes quickly away from the quiescent genitals bunched between Ezra's legs. He was lying on his bed with a naked man. He'd just fucked a man. Jesus H. Christ. If whores' gossip was bad before....

Ezra continued on as though nothing had happened. "You needn't worry; Ms. Scott insists on discretion before all else. At any rate, Amora was more naturally circumspect than most."

"'Amora,'" he snorted. He looked challengingly into Ezra's eyes. "What's your real name?"

Another golden grin, and the thumb was back to stroking Ezra's bottom lip.

"What makes you think Ezra isn't my real name?"

It was his turn to smile. "I know Janet insists on gussying you all up with fanciful names, and I haven't heard too many actual people called Ezra. I'd be surprised if there are any."

"And it so annoys her that you've managed to learn two of our real names." Ezra laughed. "So, make that three. She did indeed try to land me with a sobriquet--I believe we'd reached 'Perceval' in the _2500 Names for Baby_ book before she gave up in defeat and saw it my way. After all, with a name like Ezra, who would ever think it was real?"

The eyes brimming with laughter invited him to share the joke, but it startled him nonetheless when a chuckle escaped him. He sobered, but before he could say anything, Ezra was on his way to the bathroom with the towel and condom. He watched the shapely ass walking away from him for a moment, then twitched his eyes away and put his arm across them. Sleep beckoned in enervated muscles. He heard the toilet flush, then the bed was dipping under Ezra's weight again.

"Go on, it's all right." He moved his arm to look at the man settling himself with a sigh full length on the bed. "I don't need anything more and Janet will've charged for the entire night. You'll get a second bonus."

Ezra's mouth twitched, but a yawn interrupted the budding smile. "If you don't mind, I'll just take a nap first. It's a long drive back to Seattle. I'll try not to disturb you."

His voice, even more molasses sweet-and-slow than usual, petered out as he sighed again and settled into the mattress. Chris realized he'd already fallen asleep and stared at him with a mix of perplexity and irritation. Whores came when you wanted them and left when you were done. That was the point of having a whore rather than a date with one of the many prospects Buck kept poking him to consider. Whores didn't linger: not in your mind, not in your emotions, and sure as hell not in your bed when you were finished with them.

He could kick the guy out. Chris sighed. It would take more energy than he had at the moment and he'd almost certainly have to put up with more yapping before he got the door shut on the fellow. A nap, then he'd send Ezra back to Janet and never have to bother with him again.

:::::::

Chris woke hazily to awareness of one of his favorite sensations: a warm, wet, sucking mouth encircling his dick. He grunted and automatically spread his legs to ease the way as fingers pressed between his thighs to cup his balls and established a rhythmic massage. Without opening his eyes, he moved his left hand over the mattress and found a warm flank. He stroked the smooth skin. Psychologists claimed that touching animals could help keep lonely people from depression. Of course, while it was good, perhaps even necessary, to touch human flesh once in a while, whores were no more use in combating loneliness or depression than a teabag could save a starving man. Still, impersonal was what he wanted and paid for, and the pleasure of touching naked skin was a bonus he took for himself. Even when the skin was somewhat hairier in places than he was used to and covered muscles that flexed under his fingers as Ezra shifted position...

...and deep-throated him. Chris hissed in a breath and his fingers tightened convulsively on a sinewy hip. He drew up a leg as Ezra glided a finger over his perineum toward his anus and slid it inside. Jesus, the bastard must have lubed his fingers because it, oh, felt damned sweet and easy as that finger cruised straight to his prostate like a heat-seeking missile.

He opened his eyes at last under the barrage of sensory input emanating from his entire groin area. He stared down the length of his body to the odd sight of a man with his mouth stretched around Chris's dick. His dick, which had, Chris noted with bemusement, somehow become encased in a condom. Ezra's eyes were closed, his head moving up and down the shaft as his mouth, tongue, and throat produced a smorgasbord of sensation to complement the heated urgency his fingers were generating in Chris's ass. Chris moved his hand from Ezra's lean hip to his buttocks, squeezing the more familiar rounded contours in concert with the tension rushing along his nerve endings like a freight train.

"Fuck!"

He came, the mouth milking him as an arm pressed down across his belly to control his bucking pelvis. As his climax finished, Chris slumped back on the pillow, breath heaving. His hand slid from Ezra's buttocks to rest on the back of a thigh; the leg's breadth and firmness didn't seem quite as alienating as it had a few minutes before. Hell, in the aftermath of a blowjob like that, he wouldn't have cared if the magical mouth and fingers had been attached to King Kong's body. He chuckled at the mental image, but sank immediately into the usual bittersweet sense of bogus contentment that struck him at these moments.

He closed his eyes and shied away from the emotional emptiness by focusing on the physical sensations as Ezra slid his fingers out of his ass and his mouth from around his sensitized dick, depositing it on his belly before laying his head on Chris's thigh. Ezra's breath was warm against his damp groin, but it was a relaxing rather than stimulating sensation. The arm that had held him down during his climax was now curled around him in a parody of an embrace.

He relaxed his raised leg into a sprawl on the wrinkled sheet and sighed. The aftermath had been among his favorite times with Sarah, but it was almost obscene, now, to feel a satiation that was physically similar yet devoid of meaning.

Time to get back to business, get rid of the whore. He glanced at the clock, realizing for the first time the lamp on the bedside table had been turned on. By its muted light, he saw it was almost half-past midnight. He must have been even more tired than he'd realized; all he felt like doing was going back to sleep.

As he turned from the clock, he saw green eyes looking sleepily at him from where Ezra's head was still pillowed on his thigh. He looked into them for a moment, able to appreciate their prettiness even if they were part of a man's face. Without his volition, his gaze slipped to the mouth that had just taken him on a joy-ride. He flicked his eyes away and flexed his leg in the guise of stretching, dislodging Ezra.

"I told you I didn't need anything else tonight."

Ezra sat up and stretched his head back and his arms to the sides. His sculpted chest, as hairless as a woman's, was beautifully displayed. Chris stared at the large dark nipples. He wondered what it would be like to play with a nipple that didn't come with a breast and the inevitable reminder of Sarah. The distinctive drawl broke him from his reverie.

"I missed dinner as I had to drive all this way on a moment's notice."

Chris blinked at the change in topic and raised an eyebrow.

A grin blossomed into dimpled, golden mischief as Ezra tilted his head to the side and spoke in a husky imitation of Janet Scott's phone voice: "Darling, surely you wouldn't deny a starving worker a protein cocktail as an energy booster?"

He laughed despite himself. "So, the whole--" he waved a hand vaguely over his lower body "--was for your sake, huh?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Chris, I woke up ravenous." Ezra stretched out on his side, his head resting on one raised hand while the other rubbed circles on Chris's chest around and between his nipples. "The house lights were down, the audience was quiet--other than a snore or two--and it hardly seemed appropriate for me to disturb the entire congregation by getting up, wending my way through the unfamiliar aisles, stepping on feet, being cursed in whispers, all to find nothing at the end of my arduous journey but such unappetizing fare as is generally offered in the vestibules of such establishments. And then wending my way back with the chance of getting lost, more feet and curses to be braved, all the while balancing a tub of buttered carbohydrate, a bar of tasteless glucose, and a leaking paper cup of flat soda. Why, Ezra--I thought to myself--go to all that effort for so little reward when organic protein is on tap near at hand?"

Chris ignored the jolt in his gut as the roaming hand rubbed his nipple.

"Has anyone mentioned lately you're a nutcase?"

Ezra chuckled, cocked his head, and prompted Chris with brows raised over laughing eyes. Chris found himself intoning in unison with him, "One or two."

Chris let his head sink into the pillow and his eyes drift to the ceiling as Ezra sat up and removed the condom from Chris's cock, then made his way to the bathroom. Janet's stable of expensive whores were nothing if not well trained. _Personal Attention, Inc._ Nothing unusual in it even though he'd made a habit of not allowing whores to touch him after the sex was done.

His eyes shifted as Ezra left the bathroom and walked toward him. This time, he didn't flinch away from looking at the man's crotch. Ezra's penis was lax, not particularly large in its present state, bouncing lightly over balls that were tucked high. No bonus for him during this second round; he hadn't got off and wasn't in the least aroused. Chris wondered what it must be like to give in sex and get nothing back.

With a surge of annoyance, he pushed himself from the bed and went into the bathroom. The guy was a whore; that was what whores did. CBE agents got paid to get down and dirty--and sometimes bloody--with scum. Whores got paid to give sex without getting off. What was he doing, going soft in the head? He'd never cared about what any of the women he'd paid over the past three years might or might not have felt. He didn't abuse anybody and he paid through the nose for the discretion he needed in his job. That was all that was needed for a whore. Just because Ezra was a man was no reason to feel some kind of strange...fellowship.

When he exited the bathroom a quarter hour later, he paused at the sight of the bed neatly remade. With Ezra, still naked, stretched out on top of the covers, ankles crossed, propped up with pillows against the headboard and looking at the book Chris had left on the bedside table. The soft glow of the lamp gave his skin a pearly gleam and awakened red lights in his downturned head. He was paging through the book with apparent enthusiasm.

Without looking up, he said, "I remember this one. I think I read all of Douglas Reeman's books some years ago, or at least made a good try. I couldn't get enough of them at one time. Nothing complex or outstanding, but riveting action. Great page-turners. You can really lose yourself in them." He looked up; his eyes seemed like great shiny pools in his partly shadowed face. "Hammond Innes and Alistair Maclean, too. You must have read them as well, if you like Reeman? All three are excellent stress-relievers for unwinding at the end of an arduous day."

Chris stared at the man lying naked on his bed, propped up against--he looked more closely--_all_ the pillows, and enthusiastically talking about books for unwinding after a stressful day. He'd never considered the stresses that highly paid whores experienced and he didn't intend to think about them now.

Ezra, undaunted by his lack of response, was yammering on. "_The Land God Gave to Cain_ was one of the first of Innes's I read. I must have been around fifteen. You know that one? An absorbing story, though it gave me a decided and possibly undeserved bias against ever visiting Labrador." He looked up, that damned gold tooth twinkling as he again invited Chris to share the joke.

Coffee, Chris thought, and turned on a heel. He snagged his robe off the back of the bedroom door and put it on as he strode to the kitchen. Coffee. Get rid of the whore. Sleep. Okay. Simple. He pulled the drapes across the windows in the living area before switching on the muted under-cupboard lights in the kitchen. Ezra's voice had faded behind him, but was on the rise. As he prepped the coffeemaker, his peripheral vision recorded Ezra's arrival in the doorway from the hall. Still naked, still holding the book, and still talking.

"...virtually unrecognizable after the producers got through mangling it for the screen. Not a bad movie in its own right, and it could be argued that Shaw made a better Major Mallory than Peck had in _The Guns of Navarone_, but writing Stavros out of the sequel's adaptation was only one--though a crucial one--of the inexplicable decisions that gutted the later novel and redid it as a completely different entity. I mean, no Stavros? What were they thinking?"

He could feel the steady gaze on him as Ezra's voice fell silent. Chris turned his head and looked into expectant eyes that seemed to become greener the more intensely Ezra looked at him, apparently awaiting a response. Chris boggled at his own situation. He was up in the middle of the night making coffee that would keep him from sleeping in the hope of soon getting to sleep while a naked male hooker with a tooth of gold tried to engage him in literary and film critique. In his own freaking kitchen, temporary though it might be.

"Can't say I've given it much thought." He flashed a bland smile he hoped didn't make him look as goofy as he felt, and took a mug from the cupboard. First step: coffee. Almost ready. Next step: get rid of the whore. Now. "So, as I said, I don't need any--"

"And it's not as though they can't do a more faithful adaptation if they want," Ezra grumped. "Okay, yes, certain alterations made in _Where Eagles Dare_ in taking it to the screen were significant and possibly damaging, and we won't even mention _Ice Station Zebra_\--though even the liberties taken with that novel pale beside what amounts to being an unknown beast hiding inside the skin of _Force 10 from Navarone_. But look at the movie version of _The Wreck of the Mary Deare_! More than a nodding acquaintance with the source and it's at least as fine, if not a better, thriller than _Force 10_. Hmm. Perhaps it had to do with changed attitudes in the twenty years between productions. I wonder if that was only to do with executives' desires or included the pressures of altered audience expectation."

Chris couldn't help himself. "Wasn't all that long before your time?"

Ezra quirked a grin. "Cable movie channel. Isn't this--" he waved the paperback in the air "--also somewhat out of time? I thought most of these novels were out of print. Or have you--" his thumb moved unerringly to his bottom lip "--carefully hoarded all your first editions from your youth?"

He laughed despite himself. "Even I'm not that old."

"So you've been seeking them out?"

"Thrift shop find." He shrugged, not intending to admit he had a collection of Reeman, Innes, and Maclean novels, among others of similar style, on his bookshelves at home and that he did indeed find this kind of easy-read, action-oriented fare relaxing to wind down with while on a job. Or that the thrift shop was attached to Josiah's church in Four Corners and Josiah knew his taste and brought him such books as they turned up there. Or that Chris had seen some of the movies. Or what he thought of them.

"You have seen the movie?"

His eyes went to the paperback in Ezra's hand.

"Not this one. I don't believe any of Reeman's novels have been filmed. One or two might adapt well, but possibly not this one. A bittersweet story." He laid _Dive in the Sun_ on the counter. "Not quite the ending most audiences would go for, perhaps, or such an ill-fated hero. To succeed at the mission and yet--" He broke off and the distant look faded from his eyes. "My apologies. Your bookmark was only at page 147; I won't spoil it further."

He fell into a ruminative silence. Chris opened his mouth, but was forestalled when the Southern voice started up again where it had left off, but in a less contemplative tone. "I meant the _Mary Deare_. Action at sea, though not in that case during war."

"Yeah, I've seen it. It was all right. Exciting enough, at least the parts at sea. Bit dated when I saw it, six or seven years ago."

Late on a Saturday night, lying in bed with Sarah, empty wine glasses on the nightstands, Sarah snuggled in his arms smelling of that peach bath foam, Adam safely asleep down the hall....

He turned sharply around and turned off the coffeemaker.

"I take milk and sugar, please, if you have them."

He turned his head and arched an eyebrow.

"In my coffee." The naked hooker with a tooth of gold and decided opinions about film adaptations of action novels leaning nonchalantly against his kitchen counter looked at him as though he thought Chris wasn't quite all there, but was too well-mannered to say so.

Chris smiled. "I haven't offered you any."

He at last had the satisfaction of seeing the guy look taken aback.

"Oh."

Ezra, however, had an admirably short recovery time.

"Well," he smiled sweetly, "if you decide to, I take milk and sugar. If you have any. Of course, if you don't, I could settle for something to eat." He looked around the kitchen.

"Eat? It's the middle of the night."

"Hardly. It's only--" he turned to look at the wall clock "--1:15. Prime of the day."

"Not for most people."

"Depends on one's line of work. And I missed dinner, having to rush out here at a moment's notice."

"You were late. I thought you'd stopped for a bucket of wings."

Disdain dripped from the expressive voice. "Not until the day my options sink to nil." His voice lifted. "I was late because I stopped for an Amoretto Cappuccino. Gives the mouth a lovely bouquet. Of course, it was completely wasted since you chose not to sample my mouth." He managed to sound mournful, as though not getting to kiss Chris mattered...or so Chris thought until he spoke again: "Scandalous squandering of good money." He heaved an eloquent sigh.

Chris closed his eyes and shook his head. Totally unreal. And it was all Janet's fault for sending him this, this person instead of a nice, normal, ordinary whore. He paid her enough, didn't he? Quite enough to expect to get the services of a whore with discretion, yes. Skill, yes. Impersonality, yes. Predictability, yes. Acquiescence, yes. Instead, this time, he got yes, yes, no, no, no. And that wasn't even counting the extra equipment below the waist and the missing bits above that he would never knowingly have paid for at all.

Not that he'd actually missed the missing two above or been bothered by the extra three bits below, but that wasn't the point. What exactly the point was, he wasn't sure at the moment, but it was tied up with the drawling voice that was filling his kitchen with presence and warmth rather than the sterile emptiness it had except when his team visited. Maybe it was the maleness of the voice that gave a sense of camaraderie similar to one of his friends being around? That drawl was idiosyncratic, though; no mistaking it for anyone else.

Hell, it was probably just that Ezra never shut up while the women he'd employed in a similar capacity over the years had dried up in the face of his lack of response. Was it a guy thing he'd never noticed before? His friends talked if they felt like it whether he grunted in reply or not. His disinterest had never dampened Buck's spirits in all the years they'd known each other, and JD was well down the same path as his mentor. Nathan ranted, Josiah pontificated, and Vin mumbled whenever any of them felt like it whether he fucking wanted to listen to them or not.

But they were friends. He shook away the stupid comparisons. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he interrupted Ezra in mid-yak: "Do you ever stop talking?"

Ezra cocked his head and grinned. That damned thumb made a couple of passes over his bottom lip again before he spoke. "Well, now, almost anything can be had for a price, can't it?"

"A price? Like paying for an extra service?"

"An excellent analogy, Mr. Chris. Yes, some people pay a bonus for the satisfaction of certain, shall we say, anomalous predilections--"

"Kinks."

"Precisely, in the vernacular. And such needs requiring a specific skill set out of the ordinary naturally lead to a higher value accruing to the one with that skill set. It's no different, when you think about it, from an aeronautics specialist at NASA being paid more than the receptionist in the gift shop. The one with the special skill set has labored to earn the higher value he can expect as his due. For instance, I have a client who enjoys seeing me in female garb. Understandably, he must pay for the, uh, extra effort that such a transformation requires and for the exertion and time I've expended in learning the skill."

"You, dressed as a woman? Someone actually pays to see this?"

Ezra's eyes laughed into his, but his voice dropped to a sexy growl. "I have a most fetching purple gown, should you ever care to see it. I also sing a lovely little ditty that I've been told is enough to cause a riot."

Chris grinned. "For some reason, I don't doubt it." He looked at the fine-featured but unmistakably male face set above a muscled chest, and spent a moment trying to get a picture. He grimaced. "Purple?"

"Not my color, I admit. I believe it entertained the girls to provide it for that very reason. Still, it does the job, though the wig is another matter entirely, along with remembering how to sit and walk and making sure I keep my voice pitched higher, even while singing." He looked gloomy, then brightened. "Hence, the bonus pay."

Chris couldn't deny his amusement. "Another bonus."

Ezra beamed. A curl of warmth kindled in Chris's gut.

"And shutting up is a special skill set that can only be had for a bonus?"

"Indeed, for, you see, while my sainted mother will attest to my many God-given talents, unfortunately, taciturnity is not numbered among them. Hence, to learn it has been a burden and toil for which I naturally expect due recompense."

Chris turned away from the warm, laughing eyes to get the milk from the fridge and packets of sugar from the cupboard where Buck had stashed them. He put a mug beside them and moved away from the coffeemaker.

"Have a cup of coffee to help you on your way."

"On my way?"

As they brushed arms in passing in the narrow space between the table and the counter, Chris added, "And you could put your clothes on."

"What on earth for?"

Chris glanced at him, but quickly moved his eyes away from the lean backside that was exactly at his eye level as he sat down at the table.

"Might be cold driving without them."

Ezra turned around, one hand on the edge of the counter behind him and the other holding the mug. He looked thoughtfully at Chris, who ignored the gaze.

"You're kicking me out? In the middle of the night?"

He couldn't stop his eyes from being drawn back to the irritating man. "You just said it was the prime of the day."

"Figure of speech."

Ezra sat down across from him. First this naked man took over his bed, including all the pillows, and now he was sitting at perfect and annoying ease at his kitchen table.

"Ezra, I already told you: we're through for tonight. I don't need anything else."

"Well, it's understandable from your point of view, I suppose, though a bit much throwing me out in the middle of the night with such a long drive ahead of me."

"I tried to throw you out hours ago!"

A smile tugged at the corners of Ezra's mouth, which he hid behind his lifted mug. Chris was certain the thumb would be up there teasing that bottom lip if the mug weren't in the way.

"Well, yes, but I was in need of repose. Before facing my long drive home. I didn't realize you'd be booting me out in the middle of the night." His voice was mournful and he drooped: mouth, head, shoulders. Did he practice this stuff in front of a mirror?

"You were the one who woke me up," he pointed out. Why was he even discussing this? To get to step three: sleep, he had to get through with step two: get rid of the whore. It wasn't brain surgery. He was the head of an elite unit of the Cross-Border Enforcement Agency, used to commanding personnel and situations and fucking well making things happen his way nine point nine-five times out of ten. Goddammit!

Before he could put his foot down, Ezra was chuckling, all droop gone, his handsome face and striking eyes alight. The transformation momentarily distracted Chris and then it was too late because Ezra was talking again.

"But in such a delightful manner, you have to admit! Really, since you'd decided we were already done, the wake-up counts as a bonus from me to you." His smile was dazzling. His voice dropped to a husky purr, like Janet on the phone but without the caricature. "And I'd wager you haven't had too many bonuses like that."

A smile threatened despite his efforts. "You're a goddamn cocky bastard, aren't you?"

He knew immediately he should mistrust the sly grin. Ezra said, "I thought you'd never notice," and stood up. His cock bobbed into view directly in Chris's line of vision before Ezra turned to snag the coffeepot. He filled his mug and Chris's and sat. He was still grinning. Chris knew it even while keeping his eyes shut.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look--"

"In fact, when you think about it, everything else that happens tonight will be a bonus from me to you since you've already declared our contract complete."

"Nothing else is going to happen tonight because you're leaving."

There. He could do firm. He'd been doing firm since he was three, if you believed stories certain close relatives used to tell.

"Without dinner?"

"Why the hell should I feed you? The rate Janet charges, you could probably afford to take me out to dinner."

"Well, if you play your cards right...." A gleam entered Ezra's eyes that put Chris instantly on guard. "Speaking of cards, care to hazard your luck in a game or two?"

"It's the middle of the night!"

Ezra made a moue and shrugged one shoulder. "Prime of the day, actually."

He should sue Janet. If only it were possible. Bring her up on charges: "malicious desecration of an entire Friday night." Even if the sex was outstanding. Both times.

"I'm not playing cards with a naked man in the middle of the night. Anyway, you're leav--"

"I could always put one garment on and you could don several more." That unsettling gleam was in his eye as he gave Chris a long, penetrating look. Chris quelled the urge to pull the edges of his robe together across his chest. "And we could play strip poker. If you assume enough layers, you might even have a slight chance of winning."

He wasn't going to say it again; he wasn't. He bit his tongue.

Ezra laughed. "Yes, I am. But, all right, no strip poker. How about blackjack? That should even the odds for you. Best of three, winner take all."

He was as crazy as the nutcase opposite him even to ask, but.... "What all?"

"You win, I leave. I win, I stay."

He contemplated his opponent, who was projecting an air of disarming innocence that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He narrowed his eyes, but squinting only made Ezra look even more butter-wouldn't-meltish.

"Best of three quick games and you're gone." He nodded.

Ezra nodded back. "Cards?"

Chris fetched them. They cut for the deal. Ezra won. He gathered them up and shuffled. The cards flew between his agile hands somewhere around the speed of light and the son of a bitch didn't have the graciousness to glance even once at what he was doing. Instead, his eyes fixed on Chris. The innocent look had been replaced by a demonic geniality.

"I forgot to mention that if I win, I also get dinner."

"Changing the bet after the game's begun? You should know better." Chris looked pointedly at the rocketing cards.

"I stay, get dinner, and you might get another bonus. We both win." Damn if Ezra couldn't out-smug Buck the day after his first night with a new conquest. Alarm bells jangled in Chris's head.

"I don't need any more bonuses. All I need is to get rid of you."

Which shouldn't be this hard. For Christ's sake.

He won the first hand. Ezra's smile made the hairs on his entire body stand up. Not exactly to his shock, he lost the next two. Ezra immediately resumed his butter-wouldn't-melt look. A goddamn chameleon on top of everything else, except he was so perverse that if you wanted him to look like green bushes, he'd probably change himself into red sand or black lava or anything else you couldn't predict and certainly didn't want or need.

"Food!" Ezra jumped up, rubbing his hands, and crossed to the fridge. "What would you like? Ah, eggs. A light omelet should be perfect. Easy to make, easy to digest."

His back curved and his butt pressed backward as he bent down, most of the rest of him hidden by the fridge door. Chris removed his eyes. Not a bad butt, for a guy. More muscular than a woman's, but, hell, it did the job just fine. That wasn't any reason to acknowledge its existence now. He pushed to his feet.

"I don't want any food. I'm going to bed."

"You'll never get to sleep with all that strong coffee in you. An omelet will soak up some of the caffeine."

Ezra was bustling around, opening cupboards, pulling out a bowl, cutlery, chopping board. A chopping board? Fine, whatever, he didn't want to know. He went into the bathroom, got rid of some of the coffee, and made for the bed. He paused and looked at it, neatly made with the lamp on the left side still shedding a glow over the pillows piled against the headboard, indented from Ezra's body. The room was a well of quietness. All he had to do was lie down, put out the light, and he could be alone in the dark the way he'd been almost every night for the last three years. The way he expected to be most of his nights for the rest of his life.

He shut his eyes. A faint sound penetrated his awareness from the direction of the kitchen. Ezra was probably still talking. Did he even talk to himself? How did he fill the lonely times? Hell, how did anyone. If Ezra had any; he might, in his non-working life, have everything he wanted as Chris once had.

He took off the bathrobe. Pulling a pair of sweatpants from a drawer, he tugged them on with sharp movements, then donned a T-shirt. He stalked back to the kitchen, holding the robe. Ezra wasn't talking, but humming. He hadn't turned the stove on yet, but seemed about ready to cook whatever he'd prepared.

"Here." Chris waited until Ezra looked at him, then tossed him the robe. "You'll burn yourself."

Surprise and genuine warmth skittered across Ezra's face, but he only nodded thanks and put the robe on, belting it closed before he turned to the stove. "It'll be ready soon. Why don't you set the table?"

The omelet was tasty, and the bottle of light Sauvignon blanc he'd had in the fridge complemented it. Ezra was an undeniably entertaining companion. Chris even stopped trying to deny to himself that Ezra's animated face exuded a certain appeal as the muted lights washed over its ever-changing contours and lit up the red strands in his dark hair. His demeanor changed from sexy to argumentative to whimsical and back and forth with such naturalness that Chris wondered how much of it was an act for the client and how much might be real.

By the end of the meal--which went on far longer than Chris had ever intended or thought possible--he'd learned Ezra was actually late, and missed having dinner, because his car broke down. He'd had to call a tow truck and had arranged to pick up the vehicle from the garage the next day so as not to be even later. Hence, his desire not to be kicked out in the middle of the night with no transportation and miles from home. Chris didn't ask why Ezra hadn't just told him the truth in the first place. He'd never spent any time thinking about whores other than their immediate usefulness to him, but he knew about keeping work life and real life separate.

He shied away from even wondering why it seemed natural when Ezra told him it now, as they sipped Sauvignon across from each other at the small table at 2:45 in the morning.

And somehow, by the end of that extended midnight snack, Chris had agreed there was little point to Ezra's returning to Seattle the next day since they'd be getting up late anyway, and that Ezra might as well return to Chris's the next evening.

"I'll inform Ms. Scott of the booking." Ezra had the same smirk he'd worn when he'd flashed his skill with the cards after Chris had agreed to the wager. Chris's skin tingled.

"Hell, Ezra, you had a bet on this? With _Janet_?"

Laughing green eyes invited him to share the joke as a thumb stroked across Ezra's lower lip.

"Shit." Chris laughed. "She sends me a freaking nutcase and both of us end up paying for the privilege."

"It has a certain delightful symmetry, wouldn't you say?"

Conniving, tricky nutcase notwithstanding, it didn't feel as unnatural as it probably should have when they finally retired, both of them pleasantly sleepy, and lay down naked beside each other in the bed. Chris wrestled two pillows away from Ezra and relaxed into a darkness that wasn't as empty as usual. He fell asleep aware of soft breathing at his side.

 

MIDDLING  


###### Saturday, November 11, 2000 | Everett, Washington

"So Casey's really happy she chose New Mexico State. She likes the campus, and Las Cruces is close enough for her to get home to see Nettie regularly. And she's meeting lots of new people." JD got a wistful look on his face as his voice trailed off.

Buck studied his partner across the restaurant table. Ah, tentative young love. Almost since he and Casey had met, JD had been the one constantly leaving on cases around the country for variable amounts of time while Casey stayed home with her aunt, helping to run the small farm. Now that Nettie had finally convinced Casey to think of her own future and get on with her education, a year after graduating, Casey was no longer safely waiting at home for JD to return. She was off spreading her wings and discovering the big wide world outside Four Corners for herself.

"Worried about it, kid?"

JD blinked back to awareness and smiled at him. "Nah. Me and Casey are solid. It's just that this job has been going on for so long--" He broke off as a server handed them menus. "Thanks." As the server left, he opened the menu and scanned the pages. "Wow, I've never had half this stuff. It all sounds good, though."

Buck murmured agreement. After they'd placed their orders, JD continued, "It works okay for us, being apart; makes the times we're together even more fun." He waggled his eyebrows.

Buck laughed. "Oh, I can just imagine. This long-distance affair thing seems to work for Nathan and Rain, too."

"Yeah, and it's not bad for you, either, giving you a new pool of women to hit on every few weeks! Speaking of which, how come we're out together on a Saturday night? You can't have got through all the women in Everett _and_ Seattle already. It's barely been four months." His twinkling eyes were all warmth and no censure.

"Beating them off with a stick, kid." Buck heaved a sigh. "I figured I was due a rest from pleasuring the unattached female population of the Pacific Northwest. Plus, it's just plain been a while since you and me sat down together off the job."

JD opened his mouth to answer, but paused, his thick brows drawing into a frown as he dug in his pocket. He pulled out his cell phone, flipped the vibrating case open, and looked at the number. He grimaced at Buck and put the plastic to his ear.

"Yo, _Jay_dee, _talk_ to me."

Buck smiled. JD always pronounced his name with that heavy emphasis on the first syllable when he was on the job. He fell into a rhythmic cadence unlike his usual voice when he worked the street, talking to contacts, trying to ferret out potential informants. It was his way of sliding into the street persona, a mental demarcation from the JD Dunne whose reality was only for his friends and his girl and his co-workers.

JD was a damn good agent. Young and still learning, but the great thing about him was that he was eminently capable of learning. Buck gave him pointers and JD assimilated them with an ease some older street agents never mastered.

"Yeah, yeah, all right, man, I got it. Me and my partner'll see you tomorrow. Don't sweat it. Yeah. Ciao."

JD flipped the phone closed and put it into his pocket, shrugging as he met Buck's eyes.

Buck moaned. "Tomorrow? Don't the riffraff in this place know that Sunday's a day off?"

JD groused right back, "Tell me about it. Not only is this job taking forever, but it's seven days a week. Anyway, that was Monty--he's _Seattle_ riffraff. Gotta meet him in the city at ten tomorrow and maybe we'll get a 'hot tip.' I'll believe it when I see it."

His disgruntled tone made Buck study him more carefully. Their current case was the longest they'd had in the just over two years they'd been a Rover team. They'd done longer jobs before that, but it was different working at home. Less wearing.

The other side of the coin was the charge they got from the constant moving around. They usually came in, did an intensive study and catch-up with the local situation and terrain, and worked hard, long hours at an intense pitch. Then it was over, they did their part of the paperwork, left the clean-up to the local team, and moved on, either back to their home base or to another area that needed extra manpower.

Buck liked it. He'd liked the idea of the Rover unit when it was proposed, not least because it was the only way Chris would stay in the CBE after Sarah and Adam died. Chris hadn't handled at all well the tedium that went with working jobs from scratch after he returned from compassionate leave. Maybe the routine left him too much time to think. Buck was pretty sure Chris had been about to throw in the towel when the Rover idea was floated. He was relieved when Chris agreed to give it a shot. He liked working for the CBE, but he couldn't imagine working under anyone but Chris. A job like this demanded unquestioning trust in the lead agent.

The whole team felt the same. They'd all agreed to go Rover when Chris had considered the move, even JD, who'd only been on the team a couple of months. Felt the same about Chris's leadership and about the exhilaration of the short spates of intense activity and the constant change of scenes. "Gypsy souls," Josiah called them. They had the best of both worlds: a home base in Four Corners that suited each of them along with regular forays elsewhere.

But this particular case was a throwback to the old days. Agents who would make up the new Everett team had been arriving over the past few weeks, but, shit, it only made the job harder having to get each of them on top of the local scene and the case. The unit leader, Herrold, was back on the job and working with his remaining team member and the new people, trying to integrate them into a viable entity. It simply took time for strangers to achieve a working smoothness; one more thing that couldn't be hurried.

"It's a long haul, all right," he agreed. "But we'll make it. It's just what the ordinary units face all the time, doing all the scut work, starting from zero, growing the contacts. You didn't get much of this kind of routine before we turned Rover, kid. You're spoiled."

JD's face lightened back to its usual chirpiness. "One of the instructors at the Academy used to say--" he affected a deep, ponderous voice "--'Dogged determination, ladies and gentlemen. That's what it takes to be a successful agent. Not flashiness. Just dogged determination.'" He laughed. "If anyone should be dogged, it's us, right? Us Rovers?"

Buck snorted. "Jesus, JD, you've gotta work on your sense of humor. It's just not all there, boy."

"Ah, blow it out your ear. You just had your funny bone amputated years ago and forgot you ever had one." He played with his cutlery, then looked up, grinning. "I wonder how Vin and Nathan are getting along. At least somebody's getting a full weekend, though I bet Nathan's going to be sorry! I couldn't believe he was serious when he agreed to go hiking with Vin. I mean, with _Vin_? He's gotta be crazy."

Buck laughed. "Oh, yeah. Crazy or not, he'll probably be damned sore when they get back."

"I just hope Vin doesn't push too hard. But I think Nathan wants to get into shape for skiing. They were both saying maybe the Stevens Pass resort might open in the next couple of weeks. If we're still here--" he sighed "--and we probably still will be, they're hoping to get in some time there." He perked up. "Hey, did you know the highest peak at Stevens Pass is called Cowboy Mountain? Way cool, huh?"

"Jeez, JD, you been reading tourist brochures again?"

"It's not just tourists that ski, you know! Anyway, it was Vin that brought them home; they were lying all over the apartment. I think he and Nathan are actually hoping the case won't break until they get a chance to go up there. They're probably jinxing us."

Buck laughed and finished his beer. "You could always go with them." He waited, smiling, knowing the response he'd get.

JD twisted his face into a pained expression and said, in a voice dripping with disgust, "Cross-country. Boring." He drew the last word out while rolling his eyes.

"You shouldn't be so narrow-minded, kid. The après-ski is always fine no matter what comes before it."

"Jeez, and you call me predictable." He brightened. "But if we're still here, we could go up. Ski down Cowboy Mountain. Sounds like fun, huh? Maybe Josiah would come, too. And Chris used to ski sometimes."

"Hell, we probably couldn't drag Chris up a mountain called Cowboy. Anyway, he prefers cross-country. He'd be out there slogging along beside Vin and Nathan."

JD mouthed silently, "Boring," while bobbing his head and drumming on the placemat. He pulled back as the server arrived with their meals. In moments, the table was filled with dishes and a mingling of appetizing scents.

Buck sniffed happily and took his first mouthful of grilled salmon. He savored the taste as he chewed the tender meat, letting it slide down his throat with pleasure. "Yowsa. Sure don't get fresh fish like this at home. This is one thing I'm gonna miss when we leave. How're your noodles and meat sauce?"

JD paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "Pappardelle Bolognese." He spoke loftily, but with the care of someone who has just learned a new word. "This place is nice. We should've tried it before."

"At these prices?"

"It's not that bad. And it's not like we have much to spend our money on up here. Even our rent's paid."

"Still have to pay rent on our places at home," Buck reminded him. "But it would be nice to eat here earlier some time, when we can see the marina before it gets dark."

"What does 'cucina' mean, anyway?"

"Er, kitchen. I think."

"Really? 'Lombardi's Kitchen.' Huh. It sure sounds a lot sexier in Italian. Anyway, the food's good and this place is okay."

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then JD said suddenly, "Hey, isn't that Chris?"

Buck looked up. JD was turned around in his seat, craning to see past an ivy-covered divider into another section of the restaurant. Buck had to lean to the side before he could see Chris's familiar profile and fair hair, neatly combed back.

"Let's go say hi." JD had put his napkin on the table and was half out of his chair even as he spoke.

"Uh-uh, let's not."

"How come? He might want to join us. I never even thought, but this place is pretty near his townhouse. Maybe he comes here a lot. I wonder why he never mentioned this place."

"Hell, like everything's not pretty near everything else in Everett."

"Oh, yeah, and like Four Corners is a _huge_ place. Everett's bigger than home, you know." JD grinned, then returned unerringly to his original theme. "I don't see why we shouldn't ask Chris to join us."

"I don't think he's alone."

JD immediately swiveled around in his chair again, leaning far to the side without an iota of subtlety.

"JD!"

JD turned back to face him.

"Who's that guy he's with?"

"I have no idea. And it isn't any of our business."

JD shrugged in agreement and turned back to his meal. Buck couldn't stop his own eyes from straying to the other part of the dining room. Chris was only a few tables away, but mostly obscured by the divider. A large gilt-edged mirror on the wall beyond him, though, was at an angle where Buck could see the reflection of Chris's table if he leaned just a little, not as much as to see Chris directly. His eyes kept returning to the reflection without his intention. Chris looked...different. It took several glances before he realized it was because Chris looked startlingly happy.

Chris wasn't a particularly morose man now he'd gotten over the worst shock of his family's death. He smiled, he laughed, he joked; if not as much as he'd used to, at least enough to show he'd got himself back on a functioning emotional keel.

Still, he couldn't remember seeing Chris look this alive since before the fire. It wasn't just that he kept smiling and occasionally laughed. It was a brightness about him that wouldn't stand out as anything special to a stranger, but was striking to see in the Chris Larabee who'd scraped himself back together over the past couple of years. He'd patched his wounds with spit and fury, but Buck knew, better than anyone, it was a patch job at best.

Chris wasn't often glum, but he was more standoffish and introspective than he'd been in the years Buck had known him before the loss of his family. He kept himself more isolated from others now, wrapping privacy around himself like a magician's wards carefully set to keep out trespassers. He was closer to the men on the team than anyone else on earth, but he'd never approached this degree of buoyancy even at the happiest, most relaxed times with them.

Buck blinked his eyes away as JD waved a hand in front of his face.

"It'd be a lot easier to see him if we just went over there." JD's mouth turned up at the corners teasingly.

JD had finished his noodles. Buck turned to the remains of his cooled-down but succulent salmon.

"Nah, he looks like he's enjoying himself."

"But who is that guy? I didn't know Chris knew anyone up here."

"I don't know. I guess he must have...met him somewhere."

He couldn't imagine where or how. Chris wasn't a sociable man. He didn't have much in the way of friends outside the team even at home. Buck and JD easily networked with people; it was what made them good at street work. Josiah usually sought out a compatible church wherever they were situated and met folks he enjoyed talking with that way, and Nathan often went with him. Even Vin occasionally met someone he hit it off with at the local police gym or shooting range, though he was more likely to spend his time with Chris or the rest of them. They all tended to prefer each other's company, together or in smaller groups, other than the occasional casual date, but Chris didn't even date. Whatever women he'd seen in the years since Sarah's death hadn't been the type he'd take out in public. And this wasn't a woman, anyway.

His eyes slid again to the mirror, this time focusing on Chris's dinner companion. He looked about Vin's age, pushing toward thirty, though all resemblance to Vin ended there. His hair was dark, short, and neatly groomed. He was a man who would catch the eye, Buck thought, in part because of his attractive but not quite usual clothing. He wore a green vest that looked like paisley brocade over a white shirt with a band collar closed at the throat with an onyx button. It looked elegant and dressy without being overdone, just casual enough on its own without a jacket to allow him to blend in with an ordinary dinner crowd, yet holding the eye once you looked at him.

The other, and larger, part of his appeal was his expressive face. While Chris looked unwontedly animated to Buck's eyes, the stranger made Chris look like a block of wood. And not only his face had a magnetic appeal in its constantly changing expressions, but so did his hands, which he moved in the air as he spoke. At the moment, he seemed to be acting something out with them, fingers moving like tiny people in some kind of figured activity that made Chris laugh. Buck watched warm humor flow from the stranger's eyes as he looked at Chris and fell silent, though his mouth remained curved in a smile.

Buck switched his gaze to Chris. Chris's face was lighthearted as he sketched gestures of his own with his fingers. Buck felt a strange sensation in his gut as he watched a playful Chris he hadn't seen in three years and hadn't thought he'd ever see again. A memory hit him of Chris telling Adam a bedtime story with words and gestures both; of Chris often interacting with his son that way, his entire being focused on the boy while contented happiness rolled between the two of them in palpable waves.

He winced and looked away. Hell, that Chris was gone, buried with Adam and Sarah, and the ache of it would never leave Buck. Stupid to be reminded of the poignant feelings that had woven together Chris's small family just because he saw Chris laughing in a restaurant with a stranger. He tuned himself back into the present and JD, who was looking at the dessert menu.

"Having anything, Buck?"

"Nah." He smiled up at the hovering server and got a big, artificial smile back. "Just coffee, thanks."

He kept his attention on JD, not letting his eyes wander to the mirror. They talked a little about the meet with the stoolie the next day, but they didn't need to do much pre-planning anymore. They had the lay of the land here now and knew their way around: what names to drop to make people on the fringes of cross-border smuggling twitchy, places and incidents to refer to that upped the fear levels, who responded to bribes and who to threats.

"I can't believe how far underground this guy's gone since he blew up the Everett unit. They thought he was pretty small potatoes, but he's been handling things in a real pro way."

"I guess he isn't called 'Cagey' for nothing." Buck shook his head, thinking of the decimated local team. Josiah had had to give up trying to figure out Jenkins' coded shorthand notes. She'd come out of the coma, but her memory was lace. Her partner wasn't being much help lately, either. Being the sole unscathed survivor seemed to have rattled him more than if he'd been wounded with the rest of his team. Buck figured, in Digby's position, he'd be looking over his shoulder, too, wondering when bitch fate was going to come down heavily on him: the sense looming over him that all his good luck had been used up in the disastrous bust.

He caught movement in his peripheral vision and glanced up to see Chris and his companion heading for the door. The stranger's vest caught the light with jewel tones, washing him in a sparkly green glow. The lights also caught on the black stud on the band collar and highlighted a red cast in his dark hair. Buck shook away a memory of Sarah's hair, long and thick, but a similar color.

The fellow was still talking, looking up at Chris with a devilish grin, his hands still moving. Buck's last glimpse of Chris, as he followed the shorter man through the crowded restaurant, was of a smile tugging at the corners of Chris's mouth, but his face set in lines of social blandness as though determined not to give in to the urge to smile properly no matter the provocation.

They were gone. Buck was left with muddled feelings. Gladness that Chris had looked something like his old self warred with perplexity and a hint of resentment that a stranger had managed to do what none of Chris's friends had achieved in the past three years.

 

THEN THERE WAS LIGHT  


###### Tuesday, November 14, 2000 | Everett, Washington

Buck blew on his hands and watched his breath billow before his face. He was hunkered down behind a wooden fence that hid him from the garage kitty-corner across the street, but provided no protection from the gusts of chill air blowing off Puget Sound. The pewter sky was acquiring orange candy stripes as dawn arrived. It wasn't really all that cold; it could be cooler than this at night in the desert areas around Four Corners. It was the damp that made the Pacific Northwest chill seem to sidle right into his bones. He shifted his feet and swore he'd practice creative injury on JD's stoolie, Monty, if the little weasel had fed them a bum steer during their Sunday meeting in Seattle.

The team had been in position for forty-five minutes awaiting the arrival of Cagey Miller to claim a suspected smuggled shipment. The truck--or a truck, at any rate--had arrived at the garage twenty minutes ago. It disappeared inside, the doors were quickly shut, and the building settled back into looking as deserted at this hour as the rest of this dilapidated industrial area on the edge of the city. And here they waited, hoping Miller would actually arrive. Hoping it wasn't another set-up and they were about to be ambushed like Herrold's team.

Chris had ordered the area checked and staked out around the clock as soon as Buck and JD had phoned in the tip on Sunday. Buck's skin prickled as he thought of Nathan in the van a block away with Herrold's new surveillance expert. The van was usually the safest place to be during a bust, but the grenade lobbed last time had changed the odds. Now, the van seemed particularly vulnerable. The two people inside were at the hub of the audio and visual devices trained on the target, but deaf and blind to their own immediate vicinity.

Buck tucked his hands under his arms, flexing his fingers to keep them supple. It wasn't that cold; just uncomfortable, and the waiting tore at all their nerves. This case could be about to blow up in their faces; be successfully resolved; or have the tip fizzle out to nothing. He could feel the tension crackling in the air.

Beside him, Chris was a solid warmth, his voice an intermittent sound tying together and steadying the disparate members of the waiting force. The quiet check-ins he initiated every five minutes kept each of them aware of who was where, what was happening in the area outside their own field of vision, and how their discomfort and impatience to get on with the job was shared. Herrold and his revamped team were with them, the two surviving members getting back on the horse while the new agents faced baptism by fire. The new people understood what Miller was capable of; they had to be even more nervous than the seasoned ones. Chris's voice wove a net between all of them--the veterans, the unseasoned, Herrold's men and his own--stabilizing them, its inherent tone of command keeping them all focused on the job rather than on their adrenaline-fed fears or impatience.

"Heads up," Nathan's voice hissed over the earpieces. "Car approaching from the east."

"All right, people," Chris said, "get ready, but remain in position until I give the word to move."

Buck pulled his Walther from the belt holster. He checked it, then held it in both hands pointing at the ground, its weight and contours reassuringly familiar in his grip. Beside him, Chris did the same with his Para-Ord LDA, then stood. Buck followed, stretching his legs for the coming action without moving from his spot.

"Check in," Chris ordered.

Buck listened to each individual briskly affirming readiness and added his own status for the sake of the group when each had been accounted for. He mentally sketched in the positions of his own team members. JD was covering the back of the garage with the youngest of the recruits; they would secure that area in case anyone tried to escape that way. JD, youthful as he was, had more than two years' field experience since graduating from the Academy, most of it on the elite Rover team, which put him senior over the new man despite being several years younger. Hell, all of them by virtue of being on the Rover team were automatically senior to their local counterparts. It sometimes caused tension on the job, but, since they were usually in and out rapidly, it didn't matter. And this job was different. Everyone from Herrold down cared only about nailing Miller.

Josiah was paired with Digby, who might or might not get an attack of nerves. The Agency psychiatrist thought he was ready, but warned Chris and Herrold that anything could happen when the action began. Chris had ordered Josiah to put Digby out of commission for the duration if Josiah deemed it necessary for the safety of Digby himself or others. The two of them would be entering from the east side, the only entrance into the garage other than the front.

He and Chris would be point. Vin was partnered with the new street agent. They'd approach from the west and back him and Chris up as they entered through the front door. Herrold hadn't recovered enough mobility to take physical part in the action. He was on an adjacent warehouse's roof with the new sniper on his team and binoculars to sweep the area for movement.

A bronze Lexus LS400 with tinted windows glided toward the garage. The steel door lifted at its approach and the car moved inside, its powerful engine purring. The door immediately closed. Buck listened to the voices tinnily conveyed in his earpiece from the listening devices. He huffed out a relieved breath when he recognized Miller's voice from previous surveillance tapes. The man himself was here. Now they just had to wait for a definite indication of smuggling.

Buck kept his grip on the Walther loose, not letting sweat build up and threaten his hold. He concentrated on the voices. Nathan was counting them off, his attuned ears quicker at distinguishing individuals than the rest of them. Three men for certain from the truck, two who had spoken, one referred to by name. Miller was known to take two bodyguards with him everywhere; Nathan identified one from a few words that were mostly static in Buck's ears. Easy assumption that the other one was also present. At least six men inside. Six of them outside ready to assault the building with JD and his partner at hand for backup, a sniper across the road, and Nathan poised to bring the van to the scene. Odds in their favor, especially with surprise working for them.

Make that seven men inside. A new voice sounded, a flat Midwestern accent that came across the earpiece clearly. The man appeared to be Miller's bookkeeper, calculating figures, prices, profits. Buck's pulse jumped. Miller was incriminating himself. Any moment now and they should be moving.

He felt Chris stiffen beside him. He looked at his old friend. Chris's head was bent forward, his eyes on the ground, all his concentration apparently on the conversation feeding to them. He had one hand cupped over the earpiece as though trying to hear better. His other hand still held his Para-Ord, but in what seemed to be a death-grip; the knuckles were white. A furrow was etched deeply between his eyes.

Buck put a hand over his mike and spoke quietly. "Chris?"

Chris didn't move, just went on listening intently and frowning. Buck nudged him. Chris blinked his eyes up to meet his. Buck raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the garage. Chris nodded and snapped into his usual manner, his face settling into hard resolve and his voice firm as he rapped out the order.

"All right, move in. We enter on my say-so."

Buck followed Chris in a rapid half-crouch across the street. Surveillance had discovered no cameras or electronic guards on the decrepit looking building; they just had to hope nothing had been missed and that Miller wouldn't live up to his "Cagey" nickname one more time. He and Chris paused outside the entry door situated beside the large steel garage door. Buck studied the wooden door. Its brass lock was pitted by the salt-laden air, but it was a good quality dead-bolt. In his earpiece, first JD, then Josiah gave affirmations as they took up their positions. Vin and the new man arrived from the west. Chris scoped the area a final time, then gave a curt nod.

Buck carefully tried the doorknob, lifting his hand away when the door didn't give. He stepped back, positioning himself to batter it in. He was aware without looking of Vin behind him ready to assault the door if he failed to get it open on the first try.

"Go!" Chris shouted.

The doorframe splintered under Buck's kicking foot. He plowed inside and dipped right to circle the large parked truck, aware of Chris moving left out of his range of vision and Vin and the other agent pouring through the door behind them. Both of them peeled left, following Chris toward the building's center.

Chris yelled as they ran, his voice echoing over the wires: "CBE! Do not move! This is the CBE!"

After a startled moment, the men inside went for weapons and cover. Josiah's voice boomed his own commands to down weapons from the east side; he was converging with Chris and Vin toward the middle. The garage wasn't spacious. The truck, the car, and some large stacked wooden crates in the northeast corner provided cover, but no running room. Buck moved rapidly along the side of the paneled truck, parked close against the west wall, and spotted a man half-crouched at the front. He was peering past the fender toward the commotion, his hand twitching toward what was probably a shoulder holster. Buck aimed his gun at the broad back.

"Do not move. CBE. You're under arrest."

The man turned wary eyes on him over his shoulder, then dropped his hand, holding both well away from his sides. Buck cuffed and disarmed him, then hustled him to the door. He delivered the prisoner to the agent accompanying JD as the two of them arrived at the entrance.

A gun coughed from the east side of the garage. He took refuge behind the truck with JD, moving quickly to the front. Focused as he was on assessing the danger point and covering his area, part of his mind was glad JD was with him, that he knew where he was and what was happening and that he was safe. The rest of his mind homed in on Chris's yelling voice.

"Put your weapon down!" Chris sounded even more pissed off than he usually did at times like these. "Now! Do it!"

Buck caught sight of the shooter crouched behind the Lexus. He glimpsed greasy black curls and bull-like shoulders and recognized one of Miller's known bodyguards. Buck brought his gun to bear, but as the man made another move to rise above the hood and shoot, he gave a strangled scream and the gun popped from his hand, clattering on the concrete floor. He clutched at his shoulder as Vin and Josiah ran up behind him.

Buck tensed as neither of his teammates relaxed their offensive stances. They stood poised, guns still aimed, and Vin barked another command. Buck maintained his ready position, eyes fixed as he covered them from across the building. He drew a bead as a second figure hove into view from the cover of the Lexus, and kept watch while Josiah and Vin moved in to corral both men. Digby and Vin's partner were covering them from each side, but Buck didn't relax until both suspects were in their control. As he settled out of his tense focus, a back part of his mind registered the second gunman's aquiline features and olive complexion: Miller's other bodyguard.

"Hold it!"

JD's voice had him whipping around. He couldn't see the kid. Heart pounding in time with the adrenaline pumping through his system, he ran back along the side of the truck and found JD holding his gun on two men who were hovering statuary still in the vehicle's back doors. Nathan arrived as Buck did and the two of them pulled the men from the truck as JD stayed on watch until they were cuffed and disarmed.

Buck released his captive to the agent who had been with Nathan in the van and turned to survey the rest of the scene. Josiah and Digby were hustling Miller's bodyguards toward the door and stopped beside them. Josiah looked genial; the bust was going more smoothly than any of them had dared hope. Nathan handed off his prisoner to JD and assumed his role as first-aid man, turning his attention to the wounded suspect.

Buck noticed that Digby was flushed, his eyes bright, but it looked like healthy, controlled excitement rather than anything dire. He met Josiah's eyes and received a nod. So, Digby had performed okay. Score one for the good side. Ah, hell, score ten out of ten for the good side this time.

He scanned the room and saw Chris at the back of the building. With Vin at his side, Chris was facing the dark open doorway of what must be an office. Buck strode in that direction, Josiah beside him, their guns still in two-handed grips, but relaxed. Just Miller and his bookkeeper left to round up. While Miller was a whoreson murdering bastard, he reputedly preferred to deputize his bloodier activities.

With the yelling and the gunfire over, it was almost eerily quiet in the garage. Buck blanked out both the minor sound of the bodyguard's grunts as Nathan patched him up for transport to the hospital and the increasing volume of the sirens of approaching support vehicles, kept out of the vicinity until the bust got underway. He focused instead on Chris's voice ordering Miller to come out and surrender, the tone cool and unaccommodating over the wire.

He and Josiah stopped a few feet behind and to the sides of Chris and Vin, flanking them as Miller emerged from the office, his hands held out to his sides. He wore a supercilious look, but his eyes were deathly cold. Vin moved forward and jerked him to the side, turning him against the wall and frisking him. Buck covered Vin, expecting Chris to follow--to do the arrest himself--but Chris seemed to freeze as another man appeared in the doorway.

Chris breathed something almost inaudible that might have been, "Shit."

Before Buck could take a step or get a proper look, Miller's henchman dove from the office doorway straight at Chris. Buck pulled his gun up and yelled, "Hold it!" at the same instant a shot sounded behind him to the left. He went to the floor, spinning around on a knee to find a target, acutely aware of being without cover and of Chris down in a heap behind him.

He registered a figure leaning from the cover of the wooden crates stacked against the east wall, registered the man taking a firing stance, ignoring Josiah's yelled command to put down his weapon. Buck shot at the same time as Vin's Sigma barked behind him. The gunman screamed as he collapsed like an unstrung puppet, his arm jerking up and his gun spraying shots in a wild arc as he fell. Buck hunched down until the firing finished, then raced to the crates, gun aimed, aware of Josiah shadowing him.

An eighth man inside, goddammit, they fucked up.

The man was dead. Blood soaked the front of his clothes and masked his face; either Buck's or Vin's bullet had sliced open his carotid. A shade to the right and it would have missed him entirely. Those were the odds Buck lived with, too; all of them did. He forced himself to keep watch until Josiah first confirmed the man was dead and gathered his weapon, then checked the small space behind the crates, the last conceivable hiding place in the building. Only then did Buck let himself swing around to check on Chris.

Vin was hauling Miller away. With a wash of relief that weakened his knees, Buck saw that Chris was upright. He was crouched over the man who had tackled him. As Buck crossed the floor with long strides, he glimpsed blood on the perp's right upper arm, dripping from between fingers clamped on the muscle. Then Chris was on his feet and storming back and forth, obscuring Buck's view of the prisoner.

"Nathan!" Chris yelled, disregarding the wire.

Buck approached. "Chris?"

"The shooter dead?"

"Yeah."

Chris spoke into the mike in a modulated but tight voice. "Vin, JD, sweep this place. I don't want any more _fucking_ surprises." His voice had a vicious edge to it that made Buck look at him closely, but he couldn't see anything but fury held in tight rein. No clues as to its source. Chris's temper wasn't the most even in the universe, but he didn't usually display this amount of passion at a bust. Miller was a number-one scumbag, but he wasn't significantly different from any number of other lizards they'd dealt with, at least not that Buck was aware of.

Nathan trotted up to them. Chris gestured toward the figure sitting in the doorway behind him without turning or looking at the man.

"Nathan, mirandize this guy, get him medical treatment, then bring the son of a bitch to the office--and don't forget the doctor's certificate okaying him for questioning. Buck, let's get in that truck and see what kind of haul we've got."

He strode away, back straight, long legs stiff and boot heels staccato on the floor.

Buck frowned after him, then turned to look at the wounded man. Nathan, hands cream-colored in latex gloves, was tearing open the bloody sleeve, but the fellow was paying him no attention. His eyes were fixed on Chris's retreating back.

Fucking shit.

Buck had been mentally reviewing the mug shots he'd studied since starting this case, every known and possible associate of Miller. The moment he got his first good look at the flunkey, he knew this particular stony face wasn't in the books. He turned and followed Chris, his mind in turmoil.

When he reached the back tailgate of the truck, where Chris was already inside, he paused to look back across the garage. Nathan was pulling the man to his feet. As they moved away from the dark office, red glints showed in the dark hair of Chris's dinner companion from three nights ago.

:::::::

Chris palmed two Excedrin, topped up his water glass from the pitcher on the table, and drained the glass after swallowing the pills. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. What a freaking day. He'd never have thought he could feel this rotten after a resoundingly successful bust.

He opened his eyes at the sound of a phone in the other room. He'd retreated a couple of hours ago from his airless cubbyhole of an office in the quarters they'd used throughout this case in a downtown building between the Courthouse and City Hall. This wasn't the first time he'd opted to work in the airier conference room, utilizing a laptop networked into the office system. Papers were accumulating on the table before him as his team and Herrold's, liaising with the Everett PD and Forensics, gathered and sorted information. Miller's associates and flunkies were being netted in various coordinated operations in Everett, Seattle, and the wider area up to and across the border. Herrold was overseeing the mop-up. Most of the people being brought in were known felons who'd been left in place until they could nab Miller himself with a case that would stick.

They had that now, in spades.

He couldn't get the image of Ezra's shocked face and wide eyes at the moment they'd seen each other in the doorway to that garage office out of his mind. He imagined he'd looked similarly poleaxed in the seconds they'd stared at each other before Ezra's eyes had abruptly shifted past him and sharpened. Next thing he knew, Ezra was lunging at him, knocking into him just as a gun sounded. He'd crashed to the floor, Ezra's weight falling onto him, Ezra's grunt harsh in his ear.

_Ezra_? He picked up a brown leather billfold from the table. He'd seen Ezra handling this wallet in restaurants and clubs, extracting either a credit card or currency to pay their bills in the turn-and-turn-about habit they'd fallen into once they'd stopped being whore and client and moved on to.... Hell. Ezra insisted they were "dating." He'd preferred not to call their time together anything that loaded, thinking of it merely as friends having a meal or drinks out together. Two male buddies who would just happen to go home together afterwards and have incredible sex. And then sleep in comfortable, familiar proximity together until morning.

After the Labor Day weekend during which they spent three nights and a goodly portion of each day together, they had regular encounters for the next couple of weeks. Ezra notified Janet Scott of the booking each time and Chris's Visa was duly charged the usual fee for _Personal Attention, Inc_. But then Ezra one day quietly told him he wouldn't be informing Janet of their next meeting. That it was no longer a job, but personal. He'd seen the challenge and the question in Ezra's level stare: was he up to this? Could he handle liking to fuck a man when it wasn't the faceless fuck of a whore? More than that, could he accept that he increasingly enjoyed simply spending time with a whore, with a man, when sex was no longer the sole point of their time together, though intrinsic to it?

There were nights in the past couple of months when Ezra had stayed over and they hadn't got around to sex at all. Other times, they couldn't get enough of each other.

Ten and a half weeks, all told, from first meeting to...finish. He'd thought he'd made a pretty good start at getting to know Ezra. A good enough start to feel a pang when he'd let himself think of the case ending and having to leave.

He dropped the billfold onto the table. All the cards and ID it had held were in the name of Percy Dewalt.

_I believe we'd reached Perceval in the_ 2500 Names for Baby _book before she gave up in defeat and saw it my way._

"The guy's clean, Chris."

He looked up as Vin came in bearing more print-outs and dropped them in front of him. Vin leaned a hip against the table as he stretched his back and rolled his neck. He'd been bloodhounding on the computer for the past few hours, putting to work the superb tracking skills that were part of what made them an elite team. Each of his men, his friends, were the best in their fields. Hell, he was considered one of the top lead agents in the CBE--for all the good it had done. He'd been blindsided.

He picked up the papers and skimmed them as Vin recited his findings.

"One speeding ticket and two unpaid parking tickets in Seattle make up his entire recent record. There's another speeding ticket recorded three years ago in Chicago, where he lived until--" Vin squinted down at the papers Chris held.

Chris shuffled them. "Rented an apartment in Seattle in June this year." He dropped the papers and looked up at Vin. "He still singing?"

Vin grinned. "Sweeter'n Pavarotti."

Chris nodded. The moment Nathan had brought Ezra--or Percy--to the office after being treated at Providence Medical Center, he'd offered them full disclosure of a variety of Miller's crimes with hard evidence to back up his word. Josiah and Nathan had been interviewing him for the past few hours. They were the best interrogators on the team. They had a superb good-cop/bad-cop routine, but they hadn't needed to use either psychological tricks or strong-arm tactics. Ezra claimed to be as intent on Miller's downfall as the Agency was.

"Run 'Ezra Simpson' through the databases. Get me everything you can on him."

"Sure." Vin pushed himself upright. "Who's he? I haven't seen that name come up."

He shrugged. "Probably nothing. Just a long shot. Bring me anything you find; don't file it in the main report."

"Identifying details?"

"Around thirty. Located in this area for at least the past few months, but do a wider search before that." He hesitated. His restless fingers touched the soft leather of the billfold before he pulled them away. "Possibly originally from the South." He glanced up. "Sorry. That's all I have."

Vin nodded with a smile that warmed his eyes. He glanced at the bottle of Excedrin. "You all right?"

Chris paused to savor the reassurance that came with Vin's steadfast friendship and concern. Even when the world tilted sickeningly askew, he knew he could always depend on Vin. He managed his first smile since the bust, spontaneous and sincere. It seemed to be good enough because Vin bobbed acknowledgement and left.

Only to be replaced by Buck, who stared at him in the same unnerving way he'd been doing since the bust. Concern lurked in Buck's eyes, too, but there was also wariness that he couldn't fathom. And didn't care enough right now, frankly, to pursue. He just eyed Buck until his oldest friend came in and plunked another tape into the VCR. He pushed play, crossed his arms over his chest, and settled back to sit against the table. Chris kept his eyes on his laptop screen as the latest segment of the taped interview of Percy Dewalt played on the monitor beside the table.

Ezra was still using the flat Midwestern accent he'd heard over the wire that morning. Despite the wire's distortion and the nasal tones, he'd thought he heard something familiar in the voice as Miller's mysterious bookkeeper spoke in the garage. He'd dismissed the feeling as ridiculous--more fool he. For all he knew, that voice might be Ezra's natural one and everything he'd thought he knew of the man a fake.

His hands stuttered on the keyboard as his headache notched up.

"Dammit, Buck." He looked up, straight into another of those stares. They looked at each other for a few seconds until Chris blinked his eyes away.

"Not interested in the show?" Buck's voice was eerily neutral for a man whose every word was normally laced with expression.

"I don't need to listen to all this crap. Just give me the gist."

Buck punched the machine off and extracted the videotape. He slid into a chair and leaned his arms on the table. "Dewalt says he's given us all he knows. The ledgers and notebooks JD and I picked up from the Mall Mini Storage he told us about look to be solid. During the time he worked for Miller, he kept detailed records of all of Miller's transactions, meetings, even upcoming whereabouts and appointments, snatches of conversation, and names and incidents he heard about in passing. Anything and everything, large and small, that crossed his path while he was with Miller. He also not only kept a copy for himself of Miller's current account books as he was doing them, but managed to get access to some of the old ones and copy them.

"He seems to have convinced Miller of his trustworthiness virtually from the start. When Nathan asked him why a man nicknamed 'Cagey' would so readily trust a stranger, Dewalt just said Miller appeared to like him. He says he has a talent for ingratiating himself with people."

A long pause followed. Chris ignored Buck's eyes on him while tamping down his simmering emotions. This was neither the time nor the place to try to untangle his feelings and figure out if the anger or the hurt had the lion's share.

Buck finally broke the silence. "The Prosecutor's office is ecstatic with the hard evidence. Dewalt also gave us directions to several of Miller's own record stashes. A couple were empty, but what we got from the others should convict Miller even without Dewalt's material, though it's all helping to make this an airtight case. There's no way we'd have found Miller's records without Dewalt. Miller could write a How-to book for criminals on how to cover your ass. He kept meticulous records apparently as a hold over the people he dealt with, but he kept moving their hiding places. The RCMP have been notified and are arresting contacts as we get them identified from the records. We're all going to be working late tonight." His voice lightened. "Oh, and hey, speaking of Canadian."

He leaned to the left and reached a long arm down the table. Extricating a tall, slender bottle from the remains of bubblewrap and polyurethane that had encased it while in transport from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia to the Everett garage, he turned with a twinkling grin that was more familiar than the stares he'd been favoring Chris with all day.

"The pyramid people at the Kelowna winery want to know when they'll get their precious stock back."

Chris sputtered a half-laugh. "Pyramid power." He'd had to read the report on the origin of the smuggled goods they'd found in the truck twice before he could believe it. Still wasn't sure he believed there was a honking big pyramid in the Okanagan wine country because its owner swore wine aged in a pyramid tasted better--and that he actually managed to sell customers on the harebrained idea. He took the bottle from Buck and turned it in his hand. "It looks like a bottle of cotton candy. Very...." He waved it in the air. "Pink."

"You're holding about $84 of Merlot Ice Wine there, old dog, at today's conversion rate. Retail, that is, before shipping and taxes. That is one damned expensive dessert."

Chris tossed the bottle to Buck, getting brief pleasure from his startled yelp and awkward grab. Buck set it back among its packaging with exaggerated care.

"Ironic that all we busted Miller for today turned out to be twenty-five cases of hijacked wine. Full retail value's only about $25,200. Even avoiding the import duties and shipping costs, it hardly seems worth the effort."

"Doesn't matter," Chris said. "We busted him for a few cases of wine, but we're going to nail him for the murders of two federal agents, the attempted murder of four others, and--if the Bremerton police find the body where Dewalt thinks it is--the murder of Miller's previous bookkeeper." He smiled with grim satisfaction. "And Washington state has the death penalty."

"Yup." Buck pushed himself to his feet, but paused, looking down at Chris with another of those enigmatic stares. "You know, it's funny about Dewalt. He claims he got himself next to Miller only to get information to bring the asshole down because of something Miller did to some friend or other of his. A friend he's still refusing to name, by the way; claims the identity's not relevant. He seems to have gotten access to the records he needed pretty quickly, but, for some reason he's also not telling, he hung on with Miller for weeks. He seems relieved to be safely out of it. It must have been pretty hairy. Miller's not the most stable guy to associate with, as Dewalt's predecessor could attest."

Chris stared sightlessly at the computer screen as Buck left. He didn't want to think about Ezra spending his days cozying up to Miller and his evenings and nights pretending he was someone else entirely with Chris. He didn't want to think about the tension in Ezra on some evenings, or the massages Chris had used to relax him.

He'd deliberately avoided thinking about Ezra's work as a whore. He hadn't wanted to know anything about Ezra's life outside their time together, even as the intervals they spent together had increased to the point where he should have been questioning what Ezra was living on since he wasn't getting any payment for most of his nights. What started out as a one-time business transaction between them stretched into a long weekend, then odd nights and a couple more weekends and, slowly and insidiously, into more nights together than apart through the week. He'd gone to work each morning without giving any thought to how Ezra spent his days because he hadn't wanted to know details of what he thought was Ezra's reality.

He didn't want to think now about the lies they'd told, each shrouding his reality from the other in webs of deceit.

Five hours later, after a tasteless dinner shared with Vin and more Excedrin, Chris was poring over the latest collated information when Josiah came in and sat down at the conference table. Josiah yawned widely and stretched his arms with a luxurious murmur and closed eyes, which then popped open with a smile at Chris. He responded, feeling the comfort of these men who were more than teammates.

"You look like miles of bad country road, my friend," Chris said. "And don't even bother to tell me I look worse. I can feel it from the inside."

Josiah poured himself a glass of water and eyed the Excedrin bottle. Chris tossed it to him.

"It's been one long day, that's for sure. And it appears not to be over yet. We've run into something of a snag."

Chris's gut tightened. "What kind of a snag?" He lifted the sheaf of papers he held. "Don't tell me this info is bad, Josiah. Don't tell me we're about to lose this case!"

Josiah rumbled a laugh. "Nothing like that. As far as we can tell, it's all good. You hear that?" He cocked his head in a listening pose. Chris grimaced in negation. "That's the sound of the Prosecutor doing a happy dance every time another nail is handed her for Miller's coffin. I'm surprised you didn't hear her eardrum-shattering squeal when the Bremerton police found the bookkeeper's body. She's now tussling with the Seattle Prosecutor about jurisdiction and appears to be having a whale of a time."

"At least somebody's having a good day." He shrugged away Josiah's concerned look. "So, what's the snag?"

"Mr. Dewalt is refusing the offer of the Witness Protection Program."

Dammit, if he didn't already have an ulcer, one had to be in the works. "I thought it was all arranged."

"The okay from Headquarters came through on the Prosecutor's recommendation. A couple of agents have already been detailed to come from the San Francisco office tomorrow to move him to safety. No charges are being laid against him, and Miller's the vengeful sort. Since Miller has an arm plenty long enough to reach from jail, Witness Protection isn't only logical, but considered more urgent than not."

"So what the hell?"

Josiah shrugged a shoulder. "Claims he can look after himself and intends to, quote, 'retain his independence.' He's dug his heels in. The lawyer appointed to him didn't have any more luck budging him than Nathan and I did."

"Goddamn freaking idiot." He stood. "He still in the interview room?"

"Yeah, we're arranging a cot--"

Chris didn't hear the rest as he strode out of the room, through the main office, and down the hallway to the stairs. His anger grew as he descended the three flights to the basement. A uniformed policeman was sitting on a chair in the corridor outside the interview room. Chris nodded to him and went into the observation room next door. Buck looked up at him with surprise, a coffee mug halfway to his mouth.

Chris couldn't stop himself from glancing at the monitor. Ezra was alone. He was slumped at the small table, his head resting on his arms. Chris pulled his eyes away and met Buck's.

"Shut everything down and lock up. We're done for tonight."

He turned to the door, but Buck said, in a testy voice, "What's going on?"

"I'm going to talk to our informant alone. And I don't want anyone listening in or watching."

He gave Buck a level stare and waited until Buck's eyes dropped. Buck reached over and flipped off the closed-circuit television. The screen went black and silent.

Chris nodded and turned again to the door, but paused. "Tell the others they can all pack it in for the night, unless they're working on something that absolutely can't wait until tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning."

"All right."

He went into the corridor, keeping his face schooled to pleasantness for the guard. "Why don't you take a break. I'll be with the witness." He glanced at his watch. "Twenty minutes."

The bored look lifted and the man got to his feet with alacrity. "Thank you, sir." He moved rapidly away.

Chris looked again at his watch, fully noting the time. Almost exactly twelve hours since the bust that morning. Not all that great a span of time to have the world change direction on him. Even if he could, he wouldn't rearrange events so the bust failed and Miller wasn't behind bars at this moment. That didn't stop some part of him from wishing he could roll back time. Just put time on a continuous loop so this morning never actually had to come at all.

He squared his shoulders, drew the protective cloak of his anger around him, and went into the room.

Ezra's face was turned toward the door as his head rested on the table. At the door's opening, he half-opened his eyes, but seemed disinclined to move. His eyes shot all the way open when he saw Chris and he stood up hastily, turning to face him square on.

Chris noted the exhausted lines on the handsome face. Ezra's usually brilliant green eyes were dull and bloodshot with dark smudges underscoring them. Chris couldn't stop himself from looking at the bandage wrapped around Ezra's upper right arm. Someone had given him a T-shirt to replace his blood-splotched shirt. The white cloth made his pallor seem more evident.

Chris grabbed the fraying edges of his anger.

"What the freaking hell do you think you're doing?"

Ezra lifted his eyebrows and exuded a puzzled air.

"Knock off the innocent act, Ezra. I don't have time to deal with your crap. You're going into the Witness Protection Program."

Ezra's jaw tightened and he looked up at the camera.

"It's off. No one can see or hear us."

"Ah, one of the perquisites of power, I suppose," Ezra drawled.

A humorless laugh escaped him. "First you're Southern. Then you're Midwestern. Now you're Southern again. Just what are you, I wonder."

"You know what I am."

Ezra backed up to lean against the wall, but the distance didn't reduce the intensity in his eyes as he gazed into Chris's. Pain wove tendrils into Chris's anger.

"What's your real name?"

Ezra's lips thinned momentarily, but he spoke in an even voice. "You know my name."

Chris pulled the billfold from his pocket and flipped it onto the table. "Percy Dewalt?"

"That was just a cover. A necessary subterfuge. Like the accent. To hide my identity from Miller."

"An impressive cover. Percy Dewalt got a speeding ticket three years ago in Chicago!"

Ezra's voice rose in anger to match Chris's. "D'you think a man like Miller wouldn't do as thorough a background check as you do? Assuming an identity that only goes back a few weeks and hoping to fool a man like Miller is worse than useless. Doing things by half-measures won't accomplish anything but your death."

"And so speaks the voice of experience, it seems."

Ezra shrugged, his eyes not wavering from Chris's. "I'm alive, in case you hadn't noticed."

Chris stalked close to Ezra, who straightened as Chris's body crowded into his. Ezra stared up at him warily.

"You're lucky you're not dead after the stunt you pulled today. What the fuck did you think you were doing, diving in front of a bullet?"

"Well, what I thought I was doing was saving you from getting a bullet in the back. And it worked." He gave a cocky little half-grin that infuriated Chris. "We got out of it with just a flesh wound. Barely grazed me."

Chris slammed his hand against the wall beside Ezra's head. "You're a fucking imbecile!"

He spun away, raking a hand through his hair, then swung back around.

"Does the word 'Kevlar' mean anything to you?"

Chagrin flickered across Ezra's face, but vanished as he shrugged. "Then you were spared a possible broken shoulder blade--or vertebrae."

He prodded a finger toward Ezra. "I don't need you performing jackass heroics to protect me!"

"Fine." Ezra looked at him serenely and Chris's hackles lifted.

"Fine? Just like that. All of a sudden, you're all agreeable?"

"Since it seems unlikely we'll ever find ourselves in another situation that parallels today's events, I'm happy to assure you that I won't perform heroics in defense of your life and well-being again. In the same circumstances."

He smiled widely enough to imprint dimples on his cheeks, but the look of tired strain still marked his eyes. Pain cinched tighter around Chris's throat.

"What's your real name?" he rasped.

Ezra's voice was a sighed whisper. "You know my name, Chris."

"'Percy Dewalt' wasn't just a cover for Miller. You're feeding us the same damn misinformation."

"The evidence is good. It stands on its own. The CBE, the police, the prosecutors: none of them need to know my real name. It wouldn't change anything. I'll be safer if Miller continues to believe he was sold out by Dewalt."

"I had my computer expert look for information on Ezra Simpson. Funnily enough, he didn't find anything that could possibly fit you. Not even a speeding ticket anywhere."

"You know who I am. But you haven't told anyone else, have you? They all still think I'm Dewalt."

Chris broke the eye contact, turning to pace in the small room. "It doesn't matter now. Not who you are, or what, or anything else. You're going into Witness Protection."

"No, I'm not."

"Dammit, Ezra! You know what Miller's capable of. You set up a cover identity with the finesse of a professional because you knew your life depended on it." He stopped a few feet away from the man leaning against the wall and watching him with unvarying intensity. "Why did you stay with Miller so long when you had the evidence you needed early on? You went on risking your life when you didn't need to. What kind of asinine stunt was that?"

Ezra ducked his head, smiling and shaking his head at his shoes as though they were sharing the joke. "Lord, you know why I stayed. I'd've had to leave the area if I'd come forward then. It would've all been finished between us before it had a proper chance to get started." He lifted his head, wearing a strained version of his self-confident look. "It was somewhat nerve-wracking, and definitely repulsive, being with Miller on a regular basis, but I left little to chance. My cover was secure."

Chris stared at the weary, battered man facing him with undiminished aplomb and gave up the skirmish as a lost cause. "And now you need to go into Witness Protection. There's nothing to discuss."

He turned away, making for the door.

Ezra's voice was a throb of intensity behind him. "If I do that, Chris, we'll never see each other again. Is that what you want?"

Chris closed his eyes. What he wanted was for this whole day not to have happened. For this entire situation never to have been in the cards that were dealt them. He didn't turn around. "The bust would have happened today anyway, its timing nothing to do with you. Case over, and I'd be leaving soon."

"Is that really what you intended to do? Just go and never see me again?"

He wanted to say yes. More than that, he wanted to believe it.

"I don't know." He turned around and looked across the small expanse at the tired features. When during these past weeks of mingled pleasure and avoidance had the configurations of Ezra's face acquired a certain--a special--appeal? "But it doesn't matter now. I don't know anything about you."

Ezra gave a wintry smile. "You're being more obtuse than you need to be. You know me just as I know you even though I wasn't aware you were with the CBE. A short-term engineering contract, I believe you said had brought you here?"

"Yeah, both of us lying through our teeth and you think you know me? What the hell do you know? What the hell do I know about you?"

Ezra started to answer, but the pain and anger surged in Chris again. "You told my people you got close to Miller because you wanted to get evidence that would bring him down. That was allegedly your sole purpose."

Ezra gave a curt nod.

"And you risked your life to get that evidence because Miller messed with some friend of yours. A friend whose name you won't give us."

"It's not relevant to the case."

"Yeah, so I've heard. But maybe it's relevant to me. What kind of friend is so important you'll risk your freaking life to protect them? You think I know you? I don't know you. That's one hell of a major thing I don't know about you, and I have a real hard time trying to think how important this person must be to make you go to those lengths."

"I have a strong feeling I met some of your friends today, Chris. People who are important to you, but you never mentioned them to me. Does that negate everything I've already learned about you? We've only known each other a few weeks!" His voice rose with frustration. He took a deep breath before continuing in a quieter voice. "We've got a chance to maybe--just maybe--get somewhere together and you want to throw it all away. Why? What are you so afraid of?"

A bark of laughter escaped Chris.

Ezra sighed and threw his good hand up into the air. "All right, fine. My mother. That's who Miller sent two of his goons after. She sometimes loses good sense when she spots a...business opportunity. She went too close to him when she should have steered a wide berth, he didn't like the result of their brief association, and he terrorized her."

And that was typically Ezra, always setting the bar higher and challenging him to keep up. Pain ratcheted up another degree inside him. He shied away from thinking about how much he was going to miss the aggravating bastard.

But at least it explained Ezra's insistence on remaining known as Dewalt.

He bored his eyes into Ezra's. "This was one damn stupid stunt from the start. You haven't got the training, the back-up, or the resources to take on a man like Miller. What the hell kind of arrogance let you think you could do something like this by yourself?" Ezra opened his mouth, but Chris raised his voice and spoke over him. "You shouldn't have tried this asshole stunt at all! But since you did, you should've got the fuck out as soon as you could. You like thinking you're good at this stuff? Any trained agent who knows what he's doing would have got out immediately--or been busted out of the Agency for incompetency." He hardened his voice. "You got lucky, Ezra. Amateur's luck."

He watched Ezra's jaw tighten. Sadness and outrage whirled in Chris's gut. "You risked your _life_ for nothing but to continue an affair that had nowhere to go."

"It only has nowhere to go if you won't let it!" Frustration laced Ezra's voice. "It was going somewhere these last weeks. You know it even if you won't admit it. I didn't expect to meet you, or start feeling anything for you, right after I'd got in with Miller. But, whatever you think, I'd left little to chance--or luck if you prefer to call it that. I read Miller, and I read him right." The surety in Ezra's voice hardened Chris's resolve.

"It doesn't matter now. You're going into the program."

"You finished reading _Dive in the Sun_, didn't you?"

It took him a moment to recognize the title of Douglas Reeman's book, the one he was reading the night they met.

"Ezra--"

"Can fate be crueler than to let a man win the battle and yet lose his love? Why are you insisting on doing this to us?"

"For Christ's sake, life has nothing to do with the plots of second-rate novels!" He went to Ezra before he could speak and put a hand against a stubbled cheek. Ezra blinked up at him. Chris put all the passion roiling in him into his voice: "I want you alive."

He could see the capitulation as Ezra's body lost its stiffness, slumping where he stood, and his head bowed. His cheek pressed against Chris's hand. Chris stroked his fingers up the side of Ezra's face into his thick, soft hair and cupped the back of his head.

"Go into the program."

"All right."

"Two agents are coming tomorrow to take care of it."

"So I've been informed."

"Good."

There was nothing more to say. He dropped his hand and started to turn away, but Ezra said, "Not even a last kiss?"

Then he was pulling Ezra to him and Ezra's strong arms were circling his back, cinching him close against the hard, familiar planes of his body. He opened his mouth to Ezra's and felt a rush of pain and pleasure so acute he wanted to scream, and muffled it in Ezra's mouth. He wanted the kiss not to end just as he wanted this day never to have come, and he pulled sharply away as soon as he could and left without looking back.

He crossed the few steps to the door rapidly, but paused there to get himself together. He could hear nothing behind him but a deep silence, as though he were alone in the room. Even trying, he couldn't catch even a hint of soft breathing.

He stopped himself from looking back and opened the door. He went into the corridor expecting to see the policeman since he'd clearly gone over the twenty minutes. He wasn't expecting to see Buck leaning against the wall, laughing as he told one of his erotic stories. Chris pulled the door shut and nodded to the guard before heading down the corridor. Buck fell into step beside him when he was halfway to the stairs.

"We need to talk."

"It's late. Can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"No."

Buck lifted his hand, shielding it with his body from the guard behind them. Chris looked at the videotape he held, then into Buck's eyes. No hint of jollity lingered in their dark-blue depths.

The offices the Rover team used were empty except for Josiah leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk and his eyes shut.

"Still here, Josiah?"

Josiah came to instant awareness with that uncanny ability he had. His feet slapped down onto the floor and he gave them both a toothy smile. "Just waiting for you to finish so I could get our guest settled for the night. Nathan and I set up a cot in a larger, more comfortable room on the second floor. It's secure, and the guards have been doubled at each entrance to the building. He should be safe until morning."

Chris raked a hand through his hair and nodded.

Josiah stood. "Is he going into the program?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I'll see you gents tomorrow." With a wave of his hand, Josiah left.

Chris stalked into the conference room and dropped wearily into his chair. Buck shut the door and sat across from him. Chris looked at the videotape he set on the table between them.

"I told you to stop filming and lock the place up."

Buck met his eyes with the same steady gaze he'd been leveling at him the whole damn day.

"JD and I ate at the Marina Village on Saturday night."

Chris frowned at the non sequitur, but dinner was suddenly leaden in his stomach.

"At Lombardi's Cucina, as it happens."

He drew a deep breath and sighed it out. "I didn't see you."

"Nope. JD wanted to say hi, but I figured you probably wouldn't want to be interrupted."

"You recognized him at the bust this morning." And everything fell into place.

"Yeah. He was livelier on Saturday night, but, yeah, I recognized him. JD hasn't, though; you were seated behind him. He only got a glimpse." Buck leaned forward. "Jesus, Chris, what the hell are you doing?"

"You're the one who's making a habit of spying on me. You tell me, Buck. What am I doing?"

"You're involved with a _man_?"

Buck's voice was so appalled and his objection so not what Chris was expecting that it surprised a laugh out of him. "Wait, wait, let me get this straight. Out of everything that's happened, the one thing that's bothering you is that I've been sleeping with a guy?"

"Since when do you walk on the far side of the street? You've never shown any interest that way in all the time I've known you!"

"I know it's probably a shock to hear this, but I had a life before ten years ago."

"Now, I thought we'd known each other for twelve years."

This conversation was almost as surreal as ones he'd kept having with Ezra. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to think about Ezra.

"Is that the kind of wild stuff you used to get up to with Ella Gaines, back before we met?"

He gritted his teeth. "Stay out of my personal life, Buck. It's none of your freaking business."

Buck leaned back in his chair. "He's a material witness."

"I know what he is. And so do you." He flicked the tape so it slithered across the table toward Buck. "What are you going to do with it?"

Silence stretched for several seconds as Buck went on studying him in that annoying way that made Chris want to strangle him so he could finally call an end to this fucking horrible day and go to his temporary and soon to be left-behind home. But more than a decade of close friendship had taught him to trust Buck's heart. So he mustered what patience he could and waited until Buck was ready to speak.

"You know, on Saturday night, I didn't have any idea who he was. Sure as hell never thought he might be your lover! I wouldn't have paid any attention to him except...." He picked up the tape and looked at it as he hefted it, then raised his head and met Chris's eyes. "I haven't seen you look that relaxed and all-out happy since before the fire. I didn't know who he was or how come he had that effect on you, but I was real glad to see it."

He stood and leaned over the table to put the videotape down directly in front of Chris. His voice was gentle. "I'm sorry things worked out this way. See you in the morning, old dog."

When he left, he pulled the door quietly shut behind him, leaving Chris his privacy. And aloneness.

 

ULTIME THULE  


###### Sunday, December 24, 2000 | Four Corners, New Mexico

Chris leaned back in his chair with his beer and looked past his feet on the coffee table to the last embers glowing in the fireplace. After ten hours of six men laughing, talking, eating, drinking, and jostling about in his small house, the silence now they were all gone was less oppressive than usual. Even welcome. It was a hell of a good day, though. Since the Rover team was formed, spending Christmas Eve together at his place was becoming tradition.

Tomorrow, the others would spend Christmas Day in their respective chosen ways: JD and Vin with Casey and Nettie Wells, Nathan with Rain, Buck with his latest girlfriend, Josiah helping out with the parish Christmas party at his church. But they'd all be back out here, singly or in groups, continuously throughout the light work week they had in the run-up to New Year's.

The whole lot of them were like a flock of homing pigeons, all following Buck's tail feathers as he'd refused to let Chris retreat from humanity in the years since the fire.

If he'd been able to see the future, he might have built himself a bigger house to begin with. After losing Sarah and Adam, when he couldn't bear to be near the burned-out shell of his property outside Eagle Bend, he'd relocated to Four Corners. Even this moderate-sized town, however, had proved claustrophobic. He'd used the insurance money from the fire to buy a piece of property on the outskirts. He'd got a large enough piece of land to ensure himself privacy, then built a house that was really just a cabin. Living room, small kitchen, bedroom and bathroom provided everything he needed--until five overly large, overly pushy, and overly rambunctious men decided to make it their home coop.

With typical carefree disregard of his desires, Buck was spearheading a plan for them all to build an addition to the cabin in the summer. Chris had watched with bemusement as they'd worked out a floor plan during their spare time over the past few months. When the team had returned to Four Corners after tying up the Miller case in Everett, Nathan had taken the plans to a draftsman and gotten blueprints drawn up. Even this afternoon, they'd tramped outside and walked the ground to the east of the cabin, discussing how much leveling was required and whether they'd need to rent a backhoe for more than one day.

His opinion hadn't been solicited. He had a feeling that if he went on ignoring their intentions, he'd simply wake up one morning with the work underway and the five of them cheerfully thumbing their noses at him. Hell, he might as well bow to the inevitable and help them. Get them out of his hair all the sooner.

He smiled and lifted the Dos Equis bottle to his cheek, welcoming the coolness. Vin had opened a window once they were alone, but it was still a tad warm inside despite the cold night air. Vin had stayed on for a couple of hours after the others left around ten. They'd unwound together in that easy way the two of them had enjoyed from the start. Odd to think about. He'd felt an instant sense of knowing all that was important about Vin Tanner at their first meeting, a feeling he'd experienced with no one else in his life but Sarah. With Sarah, it had been a larger package, encompassing sex and romance as well as close friendship, but there was that same easy communion between them, both of them seeming to understand the other without a lot of jabber. Being with Vin gave him a little of the peace he'd been missing since losing Sarah.

Yet for all that being with Vin made him feel a little as he'd used to with his wife, nothing sexual reverberated between them. Even after his recent reintroduction to sex with a man, he couldn't imagine getting down and dirty with Vin. The friendship they had--like his different but equally deep friendship with Buck--was rounded and satisfying exactly as it was.

He looked at the framed photograph on the mantle. Sarah and Adam laughed out at him from the middle of a pile of autumn leaves. Sarah's dark brown hair shone with auburn lights, melding into Adam's darker hair as their heads touched. The hurt of loss pierced him, even blunted as it was by three years. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together as though he could reclaim the sensation of caressing Sarah's hair and grasp from the air the memory of her scent and her voice and her touch. All he felt was emptiness.

Truth be told, however much being with Vin gave him something of the serenity he'd felt with Sarah, the excitement and exhilaration he'd also felt with her was missing. Vin was restful to be with, which he valued beyond measure. He knew Vin would always be there for him, too, dependable as dawn and dusk. They shared interests and spent much of their time off the job together and enjoyed it. Yet the very stability and restfulness he valued in Vin came coupled with sameness and predictability. He always knew without effort where he stood with Vin and what was happening between them and how Vin was likely to respond in whatever came up. It was like they were wired into the same radio wave, grabbing all the important signals about each other out of the air.

There were no mysteries between them to titillate, no thrill of exploration and discovery and enticement when they were together. No sense of a new-found land beckoning with the lure of the unmapped and unknown.

There wasn't any thump and pulse in his blood, either, when he was with Vin. He used to get hard just watching Sarah move or laugh, her dark eyes shining, the smell and sound of her a cloud of aphrodisiac enveloping him. He'd missed that cell-deep clamor almost continuously since she died.

He blinked his eyes away from the photograph. Buck had given it to him, along with all the others Buck had taken of Sarah and Adam. Every memento Chris had had of his family burned to ashes with them. If not for Buck, he might be losing the images of their faces the way he was losing the battle to keep their voices alive in his memory.

Buck had only had a box of stills to give him, though. The collection of videotapes recording all the stages of Adam's life that Sarah had filmed and stored, each neatly labeled, were gone. The baby book was gone, and the pictures and report cards from his few months at kindergarten. The tape of their wedding was gone, of Sarah dancing in his arms, radiant despite her father's hurtful refusal to attend or even speak to her since she insisted on marrying Chris against his wishes. The tapes he'd shot of Sarah on their honeymoon, of Sarah at their new house, of Sarah pregnant, of Sarah nursing, of Sarah in every different mood and phase: all were gone. The grace in her movements, the bounce in her step, the way she lifted her chin when she turned her head existed only in his faltering memory.

All he had left were a few photographs and a couple of finger paintings made for Uncle Buck, but they were everything Buck could give him. Buck had given him all he had because that was the essence of Buck's brand of love.

The only videotape Buck had ever had to give him was hidden in his closet like a dirty secret. He'd meant to destroy it as soon as Buck left him alone in the conference room in the Everett office, but he'd hesitated and ended up taking it home. He hadn't watched it. Ezra's distinctive voice was still clear in his mind, the contours of his face and his way of moving his hands in the air while he talked not yet lost to him. He wasn't sure what he'd felt for Ezra, if anything other than lust and a deep sheer pleasure that had lifted his spirits every time he was with him. Being with Ezra hadn't captured any of the serenity he'd felt with Sarah, but the visceral response was poignantly similar.

He figured he'd been fighting it all along, reluctant to admit he might want someone sexually and romantically the way he'd wanted Sarah. Why was it easy to accept and appreciate the emotional connection he felt with Vin, but hard to face sexual desire for someone new? He knew for a fact he hadn't valued Sarah as a sexual partner over Sarah as his best friend. He'd had enough empty sexual encounters in his life before and after Sarah to know the difference between sex and love and which one was meaningful. He'd told himself Ezra was just a sex partner. Damned hooker with a tooth of gold and an exasperating way of getting under his skin and amusing him, irritating him, arousing him, all within the space of minutes. He'd felt a wider and deeper range of emotions in the few weeks he'd spent getting to know Ezra than he'd felt in the past three years. He suspected Ezra might eventually have tapped every emotion in him.

And Ezra was right: he'd been afraid of what he might feel.

He hadn't watched the tape. Someday, though, when his memories of Ezra's vital presence were fading the way Sarah was from his memory, maybe he'd want to look at it. Or maybe he'd still be too afraid.

He swung his feet from the coffee table to the floor and put down the empty bottle. About to stand, he paused as he heard the sound of tires on the gravel driveway. Only one person would turn up at his place at this time of night, Christmas Eve to boot; or Christmas Day now, technically. He glanced around as he headed for the door, wondering what Vin might have left that was important enough to turn around and come back for. He flipped on the outside lights and went out onto the porch just as a white sedan glided to a stop behind his pickup. He narrowed his eyes. The car couldn't be much more different from Vin's vintage woodie station wagon.

When the driver emerged and paused in the pool of lights to look up at him, he didn't know whether to feel glad or furious or incredulous or resigned. By the time Ezra had walked along the path and stepped up onto the porch, Chris reckoned he might as well just settle for a jumble of emotions without trying to sort them out, the way he'd mostly felt around this man.

Ezra gave him a bright, sassy, gotta-love-me! smile. Chris bit down hard on the inside of his mouth and turned inside.

"Thank heavens it's warm in here," Ezra drawled as he shut the door behind them. "I thought I'd get frostbite in certain vital appendages waiting for your guests to depart. I had my hands tucked between my legs for so long they'd settled down in conjugal bliss with my balls and objected to being divorced when I needed them to drive. And that was a very long delay at the end. I was beginning to think I'd either nodded off into a hypothermic doze, miscounted the cars that passed the lane a few miles down the main road where I had to lurk, or your last guest intended to stay the night." He gave Chris a sidelong look from under raised brows.

So much for peace, silence, and serenity.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Ezra's thumb stroked his bottom lip. Chris tore his eyes away. Damn and blast.

"It's Christmas. A time to be with loved ones, no? Or so all the songs tell us."

"You're in the Witness Protection Program. You're not supposed to be here. No associating with, with--" he ran a hand through his hair in an effort to clear his thinking processes "--former...associates."

He sank into his chair, ignoring Ezra's amused smile as he sat on the couch.

"Well, I'm here now, so we might as well make the best of it." He looked around. "Speaking of which, your herd of guests didn't happen to leave any fine liquor behind, did they? The warming benefits would be much appreciated."

"No alcohol since you'll be driving soon."

"You're going to throw me out in the middle of the night?"

Chris looked at the guileless face and counted to ten. They were not going to re-enact the night they met. He was a CBE special agent and leader of an elite team of pugnacious and unruly individualists. He had firm down pat, goddammit.

"Uninvited guests run the risk of being thrown out on their ears. How the hell did you find me, anyway?"

Ezra shrugged. "I have it on good authority that the DMV's records base is surprisingly easy to break into."

"What the hell?"

"The CBE might do a fairly good job of protecting the identities of and personal information on its agents--I'm told--but the DMV is apparently another matter. It just requires having an idea of where to look, and I had that from comments you let slip."

"I didn't let anything slip."

"Well, then," Ezra said brightly, "you must have mentioned this charming locale you call home with the deliberate intention of allowing me to track you down one day. And here I am, just as you hoped." His smile flashed golden light.

"Coming here and compromising yourself is as stupid a move as it was going under with no backup to get close to Miller, and then not getting out as soon as you could. You need to get back to your new life as soon as possible, before anyone notices you're gone."

"Actually...."

He waited for Ezra to continue, but Ezra was suddenly preoccupied with brushing off the knees of his immaculate wool pants. Chris got a sinking feeling that was not at all unfamiliar.

"You're in the program." Firm; he could do firm.

"Well...."

"You went into the fucking program, Ezra. I signed off on it myself. You left with the San Francisco agents. Two of my men escorted you to the car and watched it leave."

"True! I did, yes, I did go into the program. I went because I told you I would, which I promised to do because you were so insistent. But, uh, I never really mentioned anything about _staying_ in the program."

Chris pinched the bridge of his nose. Christmas Eve was great. Good company, good food, good booze, lots of laughs. Nicely rounded off with Vin's balanced and sane company. What did he do to deserve this?

And how sick was it that happiness was welling up in him?

"'David Johnson,' Chris."

He dropped his hand and looked at Ezra, who was leaning forward and staring at him earnestly.

"Who?"

"'David Johnson.'" Ezra stood and unbuttoned his coat. He slung it on the couch and weaved his way around and between the furniture as he spoke. "That's the name they insisted on giving me. That's the person they expected me to be for the _rest of my life_." Wonder and horror laced his voice as he paused before resuming his pacing, his hands moving expressively all the while. "They actually expected me to recreate myself as somebody called _David Johnson_. As if anybody could! There's nothing in that name to catch hold of, no personality, no essence, no individuality. It's as bland as...as two-for-one fries from McDonald's! Before you add the ketchup and salt." He spun on a heel and speared Chris with a look. "Do you know how many Johnsons there are in the San Diego phone book?"

Before he could express his entire lack of interest, Ezra was motoring on, both orally and peripatetically.

"That's not even counting Johnston. And John-stone. Plus Johansson and Jansen and Jon--no 'h'--son and Junsson. Do you know, you have to spell 'Johnson' every single time you tell it to anyone? Every time!" He flung his hands up and looked expectantly at Chris.

"Wow, what a pain."

A smile quirked Ezra's mouth, but he said, "Exactly. All that annoyance for a bland little nothing of a name that nobody could hope to make into an actual, believable person. They expected me to remake myself, but wouldn't give me an appropriate tool to do it with. And they were singularly unable to see the error of their ways no matter how I tried to explain it to them. Hopeless."

Chris winced on behalf of the WPP agents who'd been assigned to Ezra's case. "It's just a name."

Ezra swung on him. "There's no 'just' a name. A name is our identity, the fount of everything we are. D'you think you'd be the same person if you'd grown up as John--" he floundered, then spit out triumphantly "--Brown? You'd be someone else, someone not-you. Not Chris Larabee."

"I'd be the same person, Ezra. I'd just be called something else."

Ezra looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, yes, probably you would be. Your dynamic personality would probably overcome even the handicap of going through life as one among hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of John Browns or David Johnsons. But I need more to work with. I need at least something in the moniker I'm to go through life proudly bearing that I can exploit into a believable persona."

"'Percy Dewalt'?"

Ezra's face lit up. "A perfect example of a name one can hang a hat on. In Percy's case, most likely a stylish black felt fedora. David Johnson, I fear, is a Padres cap man." He gave a theatrical shudder.

Chris watched the swift play of expressions on the handsome face and felt something tight inside him loosen and fall into place. Ezra met his eyes with a warm smile, but he could see the tamped down tentativeness and uncertainty behind Ezra's jaunty exterior. He didn't know everything about Ezra by a long shot, but he'd learned long ago that the confidence he exuded most of the time was often only a front.

"What's your real name?"

Ezra breathed a soft laugh and rubbed his thumb over his lip. "You've always known my real name."

"There's no 'Ezra Simpson' on record who could possibly be you."

Ezra shrugged. "My mother has always had a cavalier attitude toward surnames. She changed hers with regularity while I was growing up. Changed it each of the five times she married, changed it with each divorce, changed it with many of our changes of residence or for...job opportunities. She sometimes tried to change my first name as well, but I was stubborn about that one, so she finally gave up and let me keep Ezra. Since attaining my majority, I've also tended to return to the same surname: Standish."

He stopped in front of Chris, who craned his head back to look up at him.

"'Return to.' You make a habit of assuming other names?"

"It's sometimes useful in my line of work."

"Whoring?"

Ezra straddled his legs and sat on his lap facing him. Chris oomphed and set his feet firmly on the floor.

"You weigh a ton." He put his hands on Ezra's hips and watched the dimples crease Ezra's cheeks.

"I'll take that as a compliment on my honed and manly physique."

Ezra leaned forward as though to kiss him, but paused, uncertainty flashing in his clear green eyes. Chris waited, not giving him any help, but not pushing him away, either. Ezra pulled back, settling for keeping him under steady regard.

"I use that particular skill set only when I need a quick source of cash. I needed a stake to effect a meeting with Miller. He was a regular at the Tulalip Casino, but interested only in very large play. Ms. Scott's level of clientele--and my own talent and looks, of course--afforded me the means to get my stake to buy into a game in fairly short order. Once in, I was able to parlay it into the much larger amount I needed to meet Miller."

Ezra's hands were warm on his arms, holding him loosely. Chris ran his hands up to Ezra's waist, but made no other move.

"You were already in with Miller when we met."

A twinkle appeared in Ezra's eyes. "Well, that first night, you weren't a job so much as a bet. Ms. Scott made you sound like a challenge I wouldn't be able to overcome. She's a shameless manipulator, as I believe you discovered."

He sighed, acknowledging he didn't really want to know what other means Ezra might employ to earn money. It was moot, which hurt as he sat with Ezra's warmth and weight against him again, the sound and the sight and the breezy clean smell of him making desire thrum in his veins. He didn't want to give him up, but the longer Ezra stayed, the harder it would be.

"You have to get back before you're missed."

Ezra fiddled with a button on Chris's shirt. "Not precisely."

He waited, but Ezra said nothing else. "Not precisely what? You can't just walk away. Your fingerprints are on record, for one thing. It doesn't matter what name you call yourself."

Ezra smiled uneasily, but spoke brightly. "It's astonishing what someone who is conversant with computers can accomplish for the right fee."

No, no, he didn't want to know....

"_Extremely_ expensive. In fact, it's downright shocking what an utterly exorbitant fee one can get away with charging just to exchange a person's prints, photographs, and DNA for those of a corpse."

Chris grimaced, screwing his eyes shut. "Shit."

"I've been thinking it might be worthwhile to take some computer courses."

He opened his eyes in time to see a calculating gleam enter Ezra's eyes. "Don't even think it."

Ezra blinked back to awareness at his growl, then essayed a reassuring smile that didn't reassure Chris in the slightest.

"At any rate, both David Johnson, late and unlamented resident of San Diego, and Percy Dewalt, the same of Everett and--at least virtually--Chicago, are untraceable. Disappeared. They have become _persona non exista_ both to various federal agencies and Mr. Miller and any goons he might think of dispatching. I'm much safer now than I was in the Witness Program."

"Dammit, you're a witness in the case!"

"My testimony is unnecessary. The hard evidence I provided them with stands on its own; the prosecutors said as much. They didn't seem to think a dubious gambler like Percy Dewalt would make a terribly positive impression on a jury; might even hurt rather than help their case. They were perfectly happy to shuffle me off into David-Johnson oblivion." He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Chris's Adam's apple. "Which means--" he pressed a kiss higher up Chris's throat "--we can take up--" a kiss to his jaw "--where we--" a kiss below his ear "--left off." He swirled his tongue into Chris's ear.

Chris shivered, his blood a pounding cacophony of demands. He shifted in a futile attempt to ease the constriction in his jeans and absorbed Ezra's earthy chuckle with another shiver.

"A new millennium starts in a week," Ezra said. "Anything is possible. Maybe even love, if you don't fold too soon."

Not only did he have firm down pat, but he did a killer adamant as well: "Nobody said anything about love."

Ezra pulled back enough to show him merry eyes. "Well, 'Nobody' has a small vocabulary, but we're working on it." Ezra kissed his way back up Chris's throat and jaw and paused beside his ear to murmur, "Aren't we?"

He took a firm grip on Ezra and pushed him to his feet. Chris stood, shifting his legs apart to get the circulation going and try to ease the pressure on his aching dick. He saw again the uncertainty that lurked behind Ezra's facade. Regret lanced through him.

"It'll never work. You can't move in here openly, and I spend a lot of time away, anyhow."

"I couldn't possibly make a living in this enchanting little burg of yours, so there's no question of my staying full-time. But I've always thought long-distance romances have a special appeal. Think of all the reunions we might cram into a year."

Chris snorted. He watched as Ezra grew still, noted the nervous desire he was trying to hide as he stopped talking and stopped moving and his face sobered into expressionlessness. He knew Ezra would leave if he told him to. He'd never see him again. Never set eyes on Ezra again or hear his voice or feel his dick hardening with desire against him or taste his mouth or be driven crazy yet exhilarated by Ezra's quirkiness and wit and impulsiveness.

He could tell Ezra to leave and Ezra would, and he'd have nothing left but the videotape hidden in his closet. Or, he could take a chance.

"Ezra." He hooked a finger through the front placket on Ezra's vest--a festive red one this time--and waited until Ezra lifted somber eyes to meet his gaze. "Don't ever hold out on me again."

Ezra held his stare for a few seconds, then dipped his head in acknowledgement. Chris cupped Ezra's face in his hands, the tips of his fingers stroking into the hair at his temples. He could feel the Grand Canyon dimples spring into existence under his palms as Ezra discarded his solemnity.

"Damn," he breathed as Ezra pulled him against his body with imperious strength.

He tilted his head down, his eyes falling shut as Ezra's tongue licked delicately at his lips.

"I'm freaking insane." And he took Ezra's mouth with the do-or-die ferocity of a bungee jumper hurtling over Niagara Falls.


End file.
